I found this thread rather interesting on this topic:
daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread40450.html28
I found this to be the most interesting answers:
">and scanf() and printf() from their prototype know what kind of variables to expect.
And in what way do you think that the runtime type selection from a format string with scanf/printf is faster than selecting an overloaded function at compile time?"
any comments about this thread?