Which is all fine if you are coding for scenarios where every ms counts like you say.

The problem I see is when doing applications where doing the work in 100ms or 1s doesn't matter at all.

Yet one will be discussing about bounds checking impact, if i++ or i = i + 1 generate the same code and many other micro-optimizations.

For the type of work I do, I always embraced the STL and never though a second about those issues, yet I was able to fulfill the expectations.