Funny you listed mostly desktop Windows applications, where C / C++ API were just the only choice in the times when these applications were born. All of the thr

Funny you listed mostly desktop Windows applications, where C / C++ API were just the only choice in the times when these applications were born. All of the three (Java, C# and C++) are used in performance-critical applications these days, but you just need look at computing as a whole, and not just at a tiny part of the market (desktop). Also, not sure why if someone points to the obvious places where C++ could be slow, people treat it personally as an attack on "their" language. The fact that many high-level abstractions are not-free in C++, doesn't preclude it from being still highly performing, particularly if you know the cost of these abstractions and you know when to avoid them.