I should have said "there is no other language which gives you the latitude for crafting high performance tools". You can indeed create serious high performance systems in a number of languages. The thing about most languages other than C and C++ is that things written in them tend to inherit their qualities - A system written in Java generally use Java's garbage collector. That works great for a number of things but it's still a constraint.
More of C++'s "modularization" features are optional than in the other languages so you have more latitude for creating your tools than anywhere else.
I should have said "there is no other language which gives you the latitude for crafting high performance tools". You can indeed create serious high performance systems in a number of languages. The thing about most languages other than C and C++ is that things written in them tend to inherit their qualities - A system written in Java generally use Java's garbage collector. That works great for a number of things but it's still a constraint.
More of C++'s "modularization" features are optional than in the other languages so you have more latitude for creating your tools than anywhere else.
Of course, you do get the badness too...