(This is mainly aimed at those who have specific knowledge of low latency systems, to avoid people just answering with unsubstantiated opinions).

Do you feel there is a trade-off between writing "nice" object orientated code and writing very fast low latency code? For instance, avoiding virtual functions in C++/the overhead of polymorphism etc- re-writing code which looks nasty, but is very fast etc?

It stands to reason- who cares if it looks ugly (so long as its maintainable)- if you need speed, you need speed?

I would be interested to hear from people who have worked in such areas.