You had better back that claim up. I've seen slow Assembly programs; operating close to the hardware is not a guarantee of better performance.
Well, I should have been more accurate: I'm not a programmer by trade, but I do understand the basic concepts of computer programming, and I've dabbled with both high level and low level languages. I've even done some assembly programming in the distant past, about 20 years ago, just to learn it, as well as a stint with SQL/400 on the AS/400 about 14 years ago. But these days the closest I come is bash scripting or dabbling in Python or Lua. I've never messed with C/C++ or Java though, hence my questions directed at those languages.
All that said, I do appreciate your response!