Don't take someones word for it, look at the dissassembly for both C and your language-of-choice in any performance critical part of your code. I think you can just look in the disassembly window at runtime in Visual Studio to see disassembled .Net. Should be possible if tricky for Java using windbg, though if you do it with .Net many of the issues would be the same.
I don't like to write in C if I don't need to, but I think many of the claims made in these answers that tout the speed of languages other than C can be put aside by simply disassembling the same routine in C and in your higher level language of choice, especially if lots of data is involved as is common in performance critical applications. Fortran may be an exception in its area of expertise, don't know. Is it higher level than C?
First time I did compared JITed code with native code resolved any and all questions whether .Net code could run comparably to C code. The extra level of abstraction and all the safety checks come with a significant cost. Same costs would probably apply to Java, but don't take my word for it, try it on something where performance is critical. (Anyone know enough about JITed Java to locate a compiled procedure in memory? It should certainly be possible)
