Not only do I care about performance, the languages I use, are able to delivery both safety and performace at the level required for project delivery.

Unfortunely too many folks still pretend C is some kind of magic portable Assembly language that no other language on Earth is able to achieve the same.

Also if I care enough about ultimate performace, like anyone that actually cares about performance, I dust off my Assembly programming skills, alongside algorithms, datastructures and computer organisation.