"I'd rather see them coded in C, or better, optimized C, or better, pure asm written by someone who knows what they're doing."
In most markets, the greatest source of economic value is high-level optimization of the whole system. If the Gods should bless you with overwhelming market demand, then you hire some bitheads to do micro-optimization (or just throw hardware at the problem).
This especially includes search. Plenty of systems have search engines that are lightning fast and come with all the bells and whistles. And are nearly useless because they (1) prioritize by criteria that are wrong for the users, and (2) are written in impenetrable optimized low-level languages that the system maintainer lacks the skills to customize.
In most markets, the greatest source of economic value is high-level optimization of the whole system. If the Gods should bless you with overwhelming market demand, then you hire some bitheads to do micro-optimization (or just throw hardware at the problem).
This especially includes search. Plenty of systems have search engines that are lightning fast and come with all the bells and whistles. And are nearly useless because they (1) prioritize by criteria that are wrong for the users, and (2) are written in impenetrable optimized low-level languages that the system maintainer lacks the skills to customize.