Totally agree with your latter statement. But the overall assertion still leads people down misguided paths. Modern OSs like MacOS, Windows, and desktop Linux a

Totally agree with your latter statement. But the overall assertion still leads people down misguided paths. Modern OSs like MacOS, Windows, and desktop Linux are presumably intended to make using computers easier. Each new release adds reams of new code implementing new features intended to improve ease of use. Yet the net effect is often negative, because the sheer amount of code added makes the overall system significantly slower. Meanwhile, new programming languages abound, presumably to make programmers' lives easier. But these developments often completely lose sight of the users. Python is easier to write, but a program written in python uses 1000x the CPU and memory resources of a program written in C. It does the job, but slowly, and consuming so much that the computer is unable to do anything else productive. Meanwhile, it's questionable whether programmers' lives have been improved either, because they spend too much time chasing the next new tool instead of growing expertise in just one. As for marginal efficiency gains - that is only a symptom of the latter developer problem. E.g., LMDB is pure C, less than 8KLOCs, and is orders of magnitude faster than every other embedded database engine out there. It is also 100% crash-proof and offers a plethora of features that other DB engines lack. All while being able to execute entirely within a CPU's L1 cache. The difference is more than "marginal" - and that difference comes from years of practice with C. You will never gain that kind of experience by being a dilettante and messing with the flavor of the week.