> If anything, extreme attention to performance comes from the opposite [of systems programming]: attempts to generalise C towards specific application domains,

> If anything, extreme attention to performance comes from the opposite [of systems programming]: attempts to generalise C towards specific application domains, particularly numerical applications. Linus Torvalds, no stranger to systems programming, is a persistent critic of language standards bodies and compiler implementers for pursuing small performance improvements at the expense of predictability and debuggability—as he expounded in characteristically direct style in a cross-mailing-list exchange in February 2016. >> ...the original C designers were better at their job than a gaggle of standards people who were making bad crap up to make some Fortran-style programs go faster. > These issues come down to the interpretation of undefined behaviour in C—to which I will return briefly in §7. I found the article does go into compilation quite a bit in that section. It ends by calling for changing the language as it is implemented, not as it is written. Yes, OCaml would fit. Functional languages have invented a lot of interesting techniques to run performantly.