I think it's because C++ maps reasonably well to our model of a CPU (basically moving stuff in and out of registers and doing simple operations on those). The g

I think it's because C++ maps reasonably well to our model of a CPU (basically moving stuff in and out of registers and doing simple operations on those). The guts of a modern CPU is quite different from our mental model and that causes a lot of distress for compiler writers but the programming model has basically not changed in the 35 years I've been coding.