You don't need std::vector if you don't need dynamic memory allocations. Game programming and systems programming is a whole lot different than web or desktop development.
For games, you create a memory budget up front. You decide how much memory sound, textures, models, AI will consume up front and then statically allocate that memory up front. http://gamesfromwithin.com/start-pre-allocating-and-stop-wor...
You can statically allocate at the start of a game, level, and frame.
From the original article: OpenAL appears to have a limit of 1024 sound buffers, which we bumped into. We could dynamically create and destroy the static buffer mappings without too much trouble, but that is a reasonable number for us to stay under.
It also sounds like Carmack is loading an entire level as a memory mapped file and then doing reads into specific indexes within the file.
Take a look at the source code that id has open sourced. That's the best way to get a feel how this style of development works. I believe RtCW is their last release. ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/ http://github.com/monoid/rtcw-rebirth
I consider myself a decent programmer but I have more trouble reading template heavy C++ than I do haskell code. To me, restrained C++ means keeping the unreadable bits outside the code base and isolated in their own library, like Boost :)
A popular thought is that any given team or company should pick a particular subset of those styles -- and perhaps a subset of C++'s features -- and use them to the exclusion of others.