The C++ implementation will still lose from an implementation that did the low-level mechanisms -- aka the 1% inner loops -- in C and the remainder with a scrip

The C++ implementation will still lose from an implementation that did the low-level mechanisms -- aka the 1% inner loops -- in C and the remainder with a scripting engine. C++ will not be faster but it will surely be more complicated to deal with. Java and C# are not really the alternatives. It is C + scripting that is.