It has gotten faster. The way I deal with the speed for games is I use it for object creation and hooking things up, and then I let C++ code in the libraries I use take care of the low level. For instance when I create a game object I use Io to create a Bullet physics object and an Irrlicht graphics object, and then I instantiate a motion state (a C++ object) that connects the two instances together. After that, when the physics object updates its position, the update feeds through to updating the graphics object without needing to touch script as a "middleman".