It's important to remember that for a lot of network server purposes, your code only has to be fast enough to saturate your network interface, and after that there isn't much point in trying to speed things up.
Not sure how often that's the case in Instagram's use, but I've been using Python and Twisted to saturate network interfaces effectively since 2003 :-), and in those situations I've been more interested in the correctness advantages of a good statically-typed language rather than the performance.
Not sure how often that's the case in Instagram's use, but I've been using Python and Twisted to saturate network interfaces effectively since 2003 :-), and in those situations I've been more interested in the correctness advantages of a good statically-typed language rather than the performance.