[rosshemsley]

> If you don't understand something doesn't mean that this is just for fancy optimizations.

You should definitely understand it, but if you find yourself wanting to use it, you should start by considering alternatives first. It's a sharp (and often unsafe) tool that should be avoided in most cases.

For your example, unique_ptr is the correct (and safe) solution and will do the same thing.

> you don't need expensive atomics (shared_ptr)

Note that shared_ptr provides no "atomicity". It is in reality exceptionally cheap.