[sehrope]

> None of them made the switch back to C++ and their "prototypes" became finished products.

This is because the vast majority of the time people's claims of performance requirements are complete BS. If you're writing true system software (an OS kernel, a database, an MQ system, etc) then shaving microseconds is going to matter because 10s, 100s, 1000s or even more applications built atop or using your code will be leveraging the minor gains you are creating. If you're building "Misc App X" then it's probably not going to matter.

[thebear]

Author of blog post here: That has been my experience as well. People tend to overestimate their performance requirements. Then, in the name of improving performance, they do all kinds of things that bring down their productivity and increase the complexity of their code (choosing C++ as the programming language is one of those things), but they never verify if any of those things really made enough of a difference, if any, to create value.

Another thing I noticed is that of those people who do have serious performance requirements (OS kernel etc.), many choose C over C++. We all know what the most famous example is. I have no experience in this area. I wonder if there is any data on the use of C vs. C++ vs. other languages like Go in that realm.