You're mostly correct, but the code they wrote DID use fancy abstractions like hash tables, templates etc. C++ delivered on abstraction WITHOUT a performance penalty, which is what the C++ designers have claimed it could do since forever. Nice to see it verified again. I have no doubt that the C++0x syntactic sugar enhancements would have have also delivered the same high performance.
Indeed. I write a lot of Objective-C code, and still drop into C++ for the CPU heavy tasks. Swapping out NS* containers for std::* alone gives a fairly high boost in performance.
All the C++ hate is blown way out of proportion. C++ is a great tool when you need performance. Tuning C++ isn't that difficult either. Contrary to what a commenter said above, steering clear of C++ at all costs is not what you should be doing. You should know when and how to use C++. It's useful more often than many people here seem to think. Especially if you develop for mobile devices.
I've been pushed back into C++ out of necessity for some DSP work and I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. It sucks for text processing but for other things it's really not so bad. As you say, with computing shifting back to underpowered devices C++ is having another day in the sun.
