@pgcd node is fast because google put a lot of effort in making v8 fast & JavaScript is generally asynchronous code, that is easy to parallelize/schedule.

In comparison python is only really fast when you're calling c bindings, asyncio does exist but i believe most web frameworks don't use it (might have changed) but you get more control with actual multi threading.

The statement "javascript is slow because its interpreted" is also true imo, its just that generally js is faster, until you use of python's exclusive features to speed stuff up even more. I feel these 2 statements are both true really but are talking about relative speeds.