> Earlier you complained there was "code that's very unidiomatic" but now you say "writing all the Lisp programs as if they were being written in Java" would be exactly right?

I may have misinterpreted your comment. By "as if they were written in Java" I meant using a similar algorithm. Alternatively, there could be a rule about idiomatic code (enforced by experts), which would compare very different things, but would also be at least somewhat meaningful.

> For some programs

I don't know. Whenever someone refers me to a result on that site that looks weird, I see very different algorithms.

> for some definition of "algorithm".

For a very well-accepted definition of an algorithm in the context of real performance comparisons.

> What is the speed of a programming language?

I'm not sure (although perhaps I could come up with some definition given enough thought), but I didn't make a website that compares languages based on performance. In fact, I said that the website is totally meaningless. But the people behind it may have something in mind, and if they do, they're not telling us. All I can do is think of ways to use the site's data in ways that can at least be meaningful.