John Duimovich converted my list test to Smalltalk. Smalltalk kicked some butt.
This is a really simple benchmark, but I like it because it shows real data structure manipulation that all programs do. 3D games constantly manipulate lists of objects in their universe. If the list operations are slow, the game is slow. Doom 4 isn't going to be written in Ruby.
BTW, as to not lead anybody to believe that I think this test is the last word in language performance, I just happened to be working on C++ lists, and was curious how other languages compared for simple insert/erase operations on dynamic structures.