Scripting at the speed of compiled code

Scripting languages such as Python, R and Matlab have a rich set of data structures and offer extensive ecosystems of freely available packages and libraries. These languages are therefore ideally suited for solving hard and complex problems - as such they are an excellent point of entry into the world of high performance computing. A drawback, however, is that programs written in a scripting language may run an order of magnitude slower than compiled Fortran or C/C++ code. Here we'll compare various strategies for making your scripts run on par with compiled code.