tl;dr: If you use C++ like Java and don't care about performance at all, it will be half as efficient as hand-optimized C. Which is pretty remarkable actually.

tl;dr: If you use C++ like Java and don't care about performance at all, it will be half as efficient as hand-optimized C. Which is pretty remarkable actually. In favor of C++. Why didn't the author rewrite it in C++? It's not like C can do anything that C++ can't.