Answer me that smart guy.

That would still be too fast.

I would be fine if I never had to return to Joliet, the place modernity forgot.

:( You would consider me a younger programmer.
I think the things you bring up: virtual dispatch in a performance critical loop, template bloat, and other performance problems aren't so much a "younger programmer" problem but the result of increasing compute power and the fact that Java and JavaScript are the programming language of choice in CS programs in American Universities. Unless you really had a reason to learn higher performance programming: like a systems programming class or a microcontroller based engineering class, you won't be exposed to the pitfalls you talk about and therefore won't learn how to avoid them. Also: complexity analysis (big O) is huge, and it's amazing how few people look at a nested for loops / crazy STL container searches/finds without realizing the performance implications. I think ignorance of the art of writing performance critical code is equal throughout the age distribution.

Maybe it just my "embedded guy" superiority complex, but you can't get away with that shit in the embedded world. Although, now that we're getting super powerful ARM microcontrollers I'm actually afraid that average code will become more and more common.

You have to really really fuck something up to have C++ OO code be too slow where you're talking "milliseconds".

Anecdotally, I use to write software that controlled generators. We used a 72MHZ ARM7TDMI with 64K onboard ram and some awfully slow external 8-bit ram chip. Never had any performance problems. Milliseconds is a really long time in the context of embedded software.

If OO is too slow, it's usually because the PEBCAK.

In my experiences as a C++ developer our challenges are mainly architectural. None of us are C++ wizards, we all have many C++/STL books on our desks and are frequently scouring forums when we don't know something. C++ knowledge or the lack of it has never been a problem. Chances are that one of us knows how to do that whacky thing you want to do but can't remember how to do it. If we don't know, its really not that hard to experiment a little and figure it out. Worst case were posing on stack exchange or some other forum.

Knowing how to develop a piece of software with an OO architecture in C++ is the skill that we find to be more important and harder to find in new devs. We have a few open recs right now and although we get many guys with years of C and C++ experience, few if any know anything about OO. Out of the current employees, less than half are 'good' at OO design.

I have worked with guys who can crank out thousands of lines of real time, embedded code for industrial applications. Globals everywhere, no understanding of encapsulation or data hiding, nothing even resembling an interface. That sucked.

Give me a good designer over a "rockstar" programmer any day.

This is exactly how neoconservatives view the free market. Politicians and laws are part of the market and fair game. A company will always strive to maximize profits, if buying laws and legislators maximizes profits so be it.

This is the free market as neoconservatives see it, whoever has the most capital wins.

About two weeks ago we had this story Silicon Valleys Loony Cheerleading Culture is Out Of Control.

Titstare just seems like a satire on the completely pointless app genre that seems to be the new popular thing to do if you are a young hip coder looking to score big in the new social/app bubble we are in.

Didn't Facebook start as a way to rank girl's appearance at Harvard? Who's to fault these guys, they could be the next Zuckerberg. Titstare is (however tongue-in-cheek) indicative of the trend of creating valueless apps and hyping them up to billion dollar status and then selling to the highest bidder trying to reinvigorate their failing business. (example: AOL/MySpace/HuffPost).