I've always enjoyed fractals, and was curious if scripting languages were up to the task. I wrote a very simple Mandelbrot set generator for my test. Rather than optimizing for each language, I tried to write each program in approximately the same way in
Many software engineers recommend what I call the "procrastination approach" to optimization. Delay optimization as much as possible, and don't do it if you can avoid it. I agree with the basic premise. Optimizing too early or too often is not a good appr