The other day I downloaded Google's Protocol Buffers tools for a project I was working on. It took a while to compile the tools; ok; but the real surprise was the speed of the tools themselves. Wow; I had [almost] forgotten how fast a C/C++ program launches! Just enter protoc --java_out <file>; hit enter; and boom it is instantaneously done. I was amazed; perhaps I have been living too long in Java land?