Seems to contradict the premise which is that programming languages were designed in the past and hence not efficient for modern computers.
C++ can also be used in ways which are really fast on modern machines. You can, for example, write code in a data-oriented "struct of arrays" approach with C++. The argument is just that C++ isn't designed with that in mind, and that a high performance language designed today could be designed with modern machines in mind.
That’s way too general to hold any truth. C++’s classes are zero cost, SoA vs AoS is not always relevant. If I have three instances of my class, each doing something compute-intensive in a simple method, how is it different to dod?
Also, even virtual functions are not necessarily any more expensive than the alternative if one knows what he/she does.
I was writing a direct answer to the question of “how can it be true that C++ isn’t built for modern machines even though modern games with good performance on modern machines use C++”. I think the answer is entirely correct in context.
I thought it was about the language as efficient tool not about performance. The Unreal engine is not even using data oriented design (at least for most parts), so I was assuming C++ sufficient efficiency was out of question. I agree with your argument, that the games would probably be faster. Game object processing is probably not the most pressing issue in games regarding performance, so I guess the impact would be not that visible (when talking about the stuff that is implemented in C++ in game engines).