The smartest people I know would always try to simplify things, but many C++ developers (especially in financial industry) have this preference for complexity I can't explain. And C++ is the worst language to get clever with.
You're not wrong, the ego among C++ devs is astronomical. There's a huge amount of serious hate for python and this idea that being a C++ dev is superior.
Get this we use Nix and C++ and the nix part of the code base is just as complex as the C++ code base. The nix stuff is just infrastructure! It's insane.
If you wanted to get the same performance from C, you'd sometimes need to write your own preprocessor/code-generator, and/or abuse the built in preprocessor, so you can specaialize. To get the same performance in Python you need to go down to C. To get the same performance in Java, you need to do stuff like what's mentioned in this thread (allocate 1TB of memory and disable GC, for example).
The only place where this is considered acceptable and commonplace, is the C++ community, I guess a chicken-and-egg problem.
In most places, you only need that performance in a small part of your pipeline - which in HFT teams will sometimes be done in FPGA or ASICs or NIC firmware. For those places, C++ is also often required, and network effects (and "impedance mismatch") often mean that it will get used for a whole lot more than where it's actually essential.
C++ is not the only such community for algo trading, by the way - the K programming language enables fast yet incredibly short implementations, and thus tends to attract competitions in "how short can you get the fastest code" (aka code golfing) to manifest all over implementations. And personally, I'd much rather have a oneliner K brainteaser that does alot than a huge 100-line C++ template monster that does the same thing 10% more quickly.
From my experience: (apologies if this looks like a flame; purely personal experience, with no offense intended).
- Python attracts all kinds of people.
- Java attracts people who prefer rigid structure, specified down to minute detail (which non Java people will often consider unneeded bureaucracy)
- C++ attracts people who like brain teaser challenges with lots of details and steps. The compiler is both their colleague and adversary in reaching the optimal speed goal (their "frenemy")
- C attracts people with more experience who just wants "the simple thing that works" without giving up the low-level control that they would have to give up using e.g. Python or Java.
- K/J/APL attract people who like brain teaser with short elegant solutions, even (and perhaps especially) if reaching and understanding that solution takes nontrivial effort -- which is basically also people who like math for math's sake.
- COBOL attracts people who like job security, good income, don't care much about job satisfaction or recent advances made in the last 30-40 years, and want everyone to get off their lawn :)