Whether or not you are a C++ fan, templatized algorithms ARE often faster than their C-based, generic counterparts. Any decent C++ compiler should be able to inline generic code while C often relies on function pointers. I'm not saying this is always the case, but often. std::sort beating qsort is a typical argument, though I'm not sure the two algorithms are equivalent excepting language-specific constructs (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4708105/performance-of-qs...)

As for size, you're absolutely right, though for many scenarios that appears to be less and less a pressing concern. Perhaps the biggest drawback is compilation time.