原因有很多，包括:

它被编译成汇编语言。 它是静态类型的。 没有垃圾回收。 没有异常机制。 编译器优化 C语言的哲学之一是保持简单并保持向后兼容性，而不是添加更多的特性。

The fastest running code would be carefully hand crafted machine code. Assembler will be almost as good. Both are very low level and it takes a lot of writing code to do things. C is a little above assembler. You still have the ability to control things at a very low level in the actual machine, but there is enough abstraction make writing it faster and easier then assembler. Other languages such as C# and JAVA are even more abstract. While Assembler and machine code are called low level languages, C# and JAVA (and many others) are called high level languages. C is sometimes called a middle level language.

甚至C和c++之间的差异有时也会很大。

当你为一个对象分配内存，调用构造函数，在字边界上对齐内存等等，程序最终会经历很多开销，这些开销都是从程序员那里抽象出来的。

C迫使您查看程序所做的每一件事，通常是非常精细的细节。这使得编写执行大量与当前目标无关的任务的代码变得更加困难(尽管并非完全不可能)。

因此，例如在BASIC程序中，你可以使用INPUT关键字从STDIN读取字符串并自动为其变量分配内存，在C中，程序员通常已经分配了内存，并可以控制诸如程序是否阻塞I/O，以及它是否在获得所需信息后停止读取输入或继续读取字符到行尾等事情。

C also performs a lot less error-checking than other languages, presuming the programmer knows what they're doing. So whereas in PHP if you declare a string $myStr = getInput(); and go on to reference $myStr[20], but the input was only 10 characters long, PHP will catch this and safely return to you a blank string. C assumes that you've either allocated enough memory to hold data past the end of the string or that you know what information comes after the string and are trying to reference that instead. These small factors have a huge impact on overhead in aggregate.

For the most part, every C instruction corresponds to a very few assembler instructions. You are essentially writing higher level machine code, so you have control over almost everything the processor does. Many other compiled languages, such as C++, have a lot of simple looking instructions that can turn into much more code than you think it does (virtual functions, copy constructors, etc..) And interpreted languages like Java or Ruby have another layer of instructions that you never see - the Virtual Machine or Interpreter.

令人惊讶的是，“C/ c++必须比Java快，因为Java是解释性的”的神话仍然活跃。有几年前的文章，也有最近的文章，用概念或测量来解释为什么这种情况并不总是如此。

当前的虚拟机实现(顺便说一下，不仅仅是JVM)可以利用程序执行期间收集的信息来动态地优化代码，使用各种技术:

将频繁的方法呈现给机器代码， 内联小方法， 锁紧调整

以及各种其他调整，这些调整是基于了解代码实际在做什么，以及它运行的环境的实际特征。

有什么能阻止其他语言 能够编译成二进制文件 运行速度和C一样快?

没什么。像Java或。net语言这样的现代语言更多地面向程序员的生产力，而不是性能。现在硬件很便宜。此外，编译到中间表示提供了很多好处，如安全性，可移植性等。net CLR可以利用不同的硬件-例如，你不需要手动优化/重新编译程序来使用SSE指令集。