I remember exactly the same story. It was necessary in a strictly defined time to analyze ~40,000 processes (1 tp - 1 file). The program was written long before me in Delphi and worked in 2.5 hours. The management had 30 minutes to make any decisions there and asked to speed up. He re-wrote everything in Builder 2006 and got the result in 40 minutes. Everyone is excited! But what kind of nail in the ass did not give rest and one of the New Year's Eve re-wrote everything on a clean "C" without templates, classes, with the upload of files to memory and the calculation of the shift of the markers and all on 2 streams. The program calculated all these files in one and a half minutes. I am in shock! Leadership is scary! Asked not to write such programs any more.