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I don't know, because if you're writing programs for things like IoT or embedded, then you're dealing with nothing but wimpy little low power processors where removing a bounds check gives you huge increases. Then, it makes no sense to have checks by default if you're going to get rid of them anyway.

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I'll just point out that a wimpy low power processor that costs less than a buck has as much processing power as a 486. And the amount of processing tends to be on small amounts of data in short bursts.

Big problem as I see it is compiler writers using C++ with it's completely broken language and compilation model. Of course they think speed is the only important metric because C++ compilers compiling C++ compilers is very very slow. And they're dealing with trusted data 100% of the time and not the guys desperately trying to patch a zero day vulnerability at 2am.

if it’s a 4% gain. then it’s the same 4% game no matter if running on a big fast cpu or a 8bit micro controller. right?

It isn't because those microcontrollers are not that smart about branch prediction and instruction ordering so the penalty is often bigger. Same with reordering - might not matter that much on a big modern CPU but may matter way more on a device with a micro cache and very slow division for example.

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