[uw_rob]

Here is Microsoft's implementation of map in the standard library. I think of myself as a competent programmer / computer scientist. I couldn't write this: https://github.com/microsoft/STL/blob/f392449fb72d1a387ac502...

[angiosperm]

I think you mean to say that you couldn't afford to devote the time to making a map that Microsoft did. Generally, in C++ we get to use data structures that have had far more attention to every detail than we could apply personally because they are used by many more than just us. Microsoft's gets used by everybody who uses their compiler, and so commands attention. It probably deserves more than Microsoft actually spends, but that is a management problem.

[harry8]

So definitely don't use it if you care about performance? (You can't write it, but anywhere you'd use it you can probably beat it). But we're getting into discussion of sensible benchmarking of actual deployable applications so let's leave that for another time.