Abstractions in other languages

Most programming languages are based on abstractions, which are transformed into machine code to be executed by the CPU. C++ has evolved into a highly expressive language just like many of the other popular programming languages of today. What distinguishes C++ from most other languages is that, while the other languages have implemented these abstractions at the cost of runtime performance, C++ has always strived to implement its abstractions at zero cost at runtime. This doesn't mean that an application written in C++ is by default faster than the equivalent in, say, C#. Rather, it means that by using C++, you'll have explicit control of the emitted machine code instructions and memory footprint if needed. ...

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