Originally Posted by Andy_K

The received wisdom these days is that for anything that isn't trivial you can't hand code assembly that's faster than what a good compiler will produce. I used to think that was because compiler developers were super geniuses. Then I became a compiler developer and I found out that it's really because compiler developers can spend insane amounts of time optimizing specific patterns. If most developers spent all day trying to eliminate a single instruction from a single function they be told to stop wasting time, but if I do it in the compiler and it makes 500 programs just a little bit faster it's a good bargain.

I like C because you can read it and (usually) know exactly what is going to happen at the processor level. C++ is just as efficient these days and lets you create your own abstractions to write code that says what it means instead of saying what it does. There's a certain beauty to that too.

Have I mentioned that I'm a huge nerd?