I finally got around to doing a little experiment.
Last Christmas, Matthew Chappee posted some code on the PowerBASIC
BBS, a C program that calculated pi to about 1000 digits.  It seems
he'd been taking the usual verbal abuse from some co-workers, who
were C programmers.  You all know the song and dance.
This pi program was the C programmers' answer to Matthew's challenge
to show him a program they thought was far beyond the powers of
BASIC.  The code is very terse and no doubt they thought to confuse
him with obfuscated C.
A couple of weeks later, Ray Crumrine posted a direct translation
into PowerBASIC, along with the warning that it ran "...as slow as
mollases." I saved both versions and put them aside.
Today I got around to compiling the C version under Turbo C 2.0,
then using Turbo Profiler 1.0 to compare the C version to the
PowerBASIC version.  Surprise!  The PB3 version (with no inline
assembler) ran faster than the C version, by about 15%.
Here is the code for each...
/* The C version */
#include 
#define A 10000
#define MAX 14000  // Multiple of 14 -- Number of digits = MAX*4/14
                   // MAX=number of digits*14/4
unsigned long a,b,c,d,e,f[MAX+1];
void main()
{
  while(a!=MAX+1)
    f[a++]=2000;
  for(b=MAX;b;b-=14)
    {
    e=b*2-1;
    for(a=b-1;a;a--)
      {
      c=((c/e)*a)+f[a]*A;
      e-=2;
      f[a]=c%e;
      }
    printf("%.4d",d+c/A);
    d=c%A;
    }
  puts("\n");
}
'The PowerBASIC version:
$OPTIMIZE SPEED
$CPU 80386
$LIB ALL OFF
$OPTION CNTLBREAK OFF
%g = 10000                    'Same as #define A 10000
%maximum = 14000              'Same as #define MAX 14000
a??? = 0   'Same as unsigned long a,b,c,d,e,f[MAX+1]
b??? = 0   'Could have used DIM a AS DWORD, DIM b AS DWORD, etc.
c??? = 0
d??? = 0
e??? = 0
DIM f(%maximum + 1) AS DWORD
u$ = "####"                   'Do this once for speed
CtrlBrk$ = CHR$(0,0)          'ditto for this
DO WHILE a??? < (%maximum + 1)
  f(a???) = 2000
  a??? = (a??? + 1)   'increment a???
LOOP
b??? = %maximum  'Initialize b??? (FOR: NEXT does this automatically)
DO
  e??? = b??? * 2 - 1
  a??? = b??? - 1             'Initialize a???
  DO WHILE a??? > 0
    c??? = ((c??? \ e???) * a???) + f(a???) * %g 'substitute %g for A
    e??? = (e??? - 2)
    f(a???) = (c??? MOD e???)
    a??? = (a??? - 1)         'decrement a???
  LOOP
  s$ = USING$(u$, d??? + (c??? \ %g))
  IF ASC(s$) = 32 THEN MID$(s$, 1) = "0"
  PRINT s$;                   'same as printf
  d??? = (c??? MOD %g)
  IF INKEY$ = CtrlBrk$ THEN
    EXIT LOOP
  END IF
  b??? = (b??? - 14)          'Same as FOR: NEXT STEP -14
LOOP UNTIL b??? = 0
PRINT                         'same as puts
END
 * SLMR 2.1a * MAXLIB For PB v1.1 - Access arrays and files in EMS/XMS!
--- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12 
---------------