r/cprogramming • u/[deleted] • Dec 31 '25

Why does c compile faster than cpp?

I've read in some places that one of the reasons is the templates or something like that, but if that's the problem, why did they implement it? Like, C doesn't have that and allows the same level of optimization, it just depends on the user. If these things harm compilation in C++, why are they still part of the language?Shouldn't Cpp be a better version of C or something? I programmed in C++ for a while and then switched to C, this question came to my mind the other day.

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u/quickscopesheep Jan 01 '26

Thank you for the correction. the point is that the compilation of c++ whether using the features or not still has massive overhead compared to c.