After reading the article, I think my anecdote is still relevant, and that the article reinforces it. As @the_duke surmised: If you don't understand your tools,

After reading the article, I think my anecdote is still relevant, and that the article reinforces it. As @the_duke surmised: If you don't understand your tools, you can use them so inefficiently that other, supposedly worse tools are much faster. The article doesn't mention what versions of each compiler was used. I'd also challenge the author to use Compiler Explorer to discover compiled-to-assembly-level differences between their C and C++ code. https://gcc.godbolt.org/ https://gcc.godbolt.org/