PowerBasic is nice example how one 'crappy' and 'slow' programming language such as BASIC can easy kick ass speed regarding to any other 'shine' languages...
While PowerBASIC does indeed kick the pants off of many other compilers, this does come with some problems: While the current compilers generate 32-bit executables, the actual compiler itself is hand-written in 16-bit assembly code... Which doesn't run on a 64-bit OS. You need a 32-bit machine to compile any .exe's, which will then work on 32 and 64 bit platforms.
Apparently they're currently working on a rewrite of the compiler so it will run on a 64 bit machine as well -- but considering how much work went into the old 16 bit compiler, one can wonder whether or not the new one will be as optimized as the current version.