No, it doesn't. I tried to make that point too, but perhaps it didn't come across very clearly. For these kind of tight inner loops a language only ever gets in the way, the difference is really only how difficult it is to get rid of the conveniences you don't want. (The much vaunted zero-cost of features you don't use in C++ lingo I guess)

I still think that a systems programming language need to offer escape hatches, whilst striving towards ease of use in the common case. C++ has plenty of hatches, at the cost of horrific complexity.

But suppose I'm willing to pay the cost of writing my code in 5 different code paths for different processors for that extra 2-4x of performance. Very few languages offer that possibility, and most of those who do only offer to call a C library. I'm the guy stuck writing the Intel math libraries of the world, and I want something more reasonable to do it in.