[krb]

recall that C++ ultimately gets compiled down to C then to assembly

It's been a long time since that's been true.

The original implementation of C++ called CFront, written by the creator of C++ itself, was just a preprocessor that translated C++ code into C. But as C++ grew in complexity (specifically when they added exception support!) C++ compilers went native.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront

[Myrddin]

I backported CFront from BSD to a System V machine in 1984. Before that, I was writing C++ on a 3B20 using the first stuff Stroustrup released within the Bell System. The early CFront version on the HP9000 in 1986 were still putting out buggy code.

I'm well aware the backends have gone to a more native appoach. GNU compilers emit RTL. I'm not real surprised to hear the MS .Net compilers are putting out code compliant with that backend.