SCL is a high level language that has much in common with other high level languages that many peopled learned in college. In previous years, people where taught assembly code in college and this leads them to be more comforatable with languages such as STL or IL. SCL is the language of choice where the manipulation of data is concered e.g. in arrays.
In terms of optimising S7 code, pay particular attention to how UDTs are used. When a UDT is passed to a function, it is passed as a pointer and every time the UDT is accessed within the function it must be de-referenced this adds (invisibly) to the size of the code and the execution time. A more efficient method of passing a UDT to a function is to copy the UDT data to local data at the beginning of the function, execute the function and then copy the local data UDT data back to its original location.
Nick