> I would say C++ is more like a zero runtime-cost abstraction language (in release builds).
Well, other than the "zero-cost" features that increase code size. For example careless use of heavy template classes can generate a lot of code.
In other words, in C++ it's very easy to generate a lot of code from seemingly innocent constructs.
Instruction cache misses, page faults (and to lesser amount TLB misses) are not zero cost.
You could achieve good release build runtime-speeds in modern idiomatic C++, but you have to trade off your compile times and Debug-build runtime-speeds for that.