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I frequently see bare queries from programmers in discussion forums, especially from new programmers, who are worried about performance. These worries often stem from popular notions about what operations are "slow." Division. Square roots. Mispredicted branches. Cache unfriendly data structures.

Inevitably someone chimes in that making out-of-context assumptions, especially without profiling, is a bad idea. And they're right.

The golden rule of programming has always been that clarity and correctness matter much more than the utmost speed. Very few people will argue with that. And yet do we really believe it? If we did, then 99% of all programs would be written in something like Python. Or Erlang.

On the other hand, BPMN has been designed with the aim of being a notation for high-level modeling.

BPMN models are not intended to be directly executed. They need to be refined (e.g. into BPEL processes) prior to execution.

At the most, BPMN might be used to generate "templates of BPEL code" that developers will have to refine to obtain a running implementation.

If portability continues to be accorded the little value it receives today from Windows, Linux, and mobile developers, I expect this sudden renaissance to be short-lived. Eventually, the balance, which by nature favors the cost of developers' time, will return towards productivity. Then, native code, for the lack of portability skills in developers, will return to being a throwback, a curiosity for speed freaks who are happy running on just one platform.