Indeed, standard library is often slow. Sometimes by orders of magnitude. Here’s an example where a fast linked list implementation (not mine, `CAtlList` from

Indeed, standard library is often slow. Sometimes by orders of magnitude. Here’s an example where a fast linked list implementation (not mine, `CAtlList` from ATL) approaches or outperforms std::vector: https://github.com/Const-me/CollectionMicrobench https://github.com/Const-me/CollectionMicrobench Fortunately, in C++ we don’t pay for features we don’t use. If you want fast code, no need to go back to C, you only need better C++ containers.