Take data-oriented design as an example: if you really read into it, it does actually relegate the compiler to something marginally better than a dumb code generator. The mundane optimizations (inlining, constant propagation, etc.) are expected of the compiler and the developer focuses on things like using the stack well (from the article) or being cache friendly.

Saying that C++ categorically cannot be used to create good machine code is ignoring much evidence to the contrary.