The point isn't necessarily about whether C++'s abstractions are faster than Java's, the point is more that you aren't always forced to use them. If you are wil

The point isn't necessarily about whether C++'s abstractions are faster than Java's, the point is more that you aren't always forced to use them. If you are willing to commit to the size of your string at compile time, you have the option to use char[N] instead, avoiding heap allocations. Or you can use a stack-based allocator for std::string. The thing about templates is misleading. Sure, if misused they can hurt your cache. But they also move branching from run time to compile time, which is a very good thing. Google some benchmarks of C++ sort vs C qsort; the former is much faster because the comparator can easily be inlined. The templates used in my post, for example, either bloat the code not at all, or very little. They are either generating tiny functions that get inlined anyway (like ArrayView; once a function is inlined its irrelevant whether it came from a template or not for code bloat purposes) or they are generating code that would just need to be written by hand (like make_contiguous). I've actually personally witnessed two fairly detailed accounts of people that actually got themselves into situations where template or template-like bloat became a performance negative, relative to the benefits they provided. They didn't cite a cliche about code bloat, they actually benchmarked and found the cost. What both of them were doing was very extreme; nobody who's not using very extreme template techniques (and therefore is sold on it) is hitting that point.