As far as I know there are efforts to bring such techniques into C/C++. For example, see GCC Graphite framework - http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Graphite http://gcc.g

As far as I know there are efforts to bring such techniques into C/C++. For example, see GCC Graphite framework - http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Graphite http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Graphite . And meantime, in the real life, if you really need your code to run really really fast (like, if you are doing nanosecond level realtimish staff in finance; or working on real-time computer vision; or anything else that really really needs low level optimizations) if you want to be competitive, you just have to go down to plain C level. And while at it, also have good understanding of your cache/memory/processors/bus architecture, cache interference, costs of system calls, compiler behavior, CPU behavior (microcode level, i.e. cache coherence or memory sync algos) and so on. You can try to not to do it, and attempt to use Haskel or Ocaml, but the cost would be two orders of magnitude. For a real-timish function that you are concerned about, in a relatively well written C/C++ you can have 200ns ± 100ns. The same function in a well written Ocaml will give you 5us ± 200us, and the same in Haskel or Python will give 20us ± 200us (when giving these numbers/example, I assume that the code is written using best possible at the current state of the art data structures and algorithms; all the aforementioned issues are well understood by the developer and the code is written at a greater guru level ;))