> 1) Most modern programming languages have ready-made implementations (by way of libraries) for almost every imaginable algorithm, I really don't think this i

> 1) Most modern programming languages have ready-made implementations (by way of libraries) for almost every imaginable algorithm, I really don't think this is true of any programming language, modern or not. > written in the most efficient way, Elementary but nontrivial problems like string matching and integer sorting often have poor standard library solutions, not to mention that "the most efficient way" is context-dependent. > and probably all open source, so you can modify it if you feel otherwise. Intel's MKL, which has a ready-made matrix multiplication that probably is about as fast as possible on their hardware, isn't AFAIK open-source. (Regardless, if you modify the standard library in your own environment, you risk creating serious interoperability headaches for yourself later on.)