Please, correct me, downvote me, chastise me if I'm off base and haven't done my research, but I just can't possibly see how coding in C++ could possibly be any faster than coding in perl

Maybe he's talking about speed of the code rather than speed of writing the code?

I'm also quite happy to accept that somebody more familiar with C++ than Perl could code up something more quickly in C++.

That doesn't mean that somebody more familiar with Perl couldn't write the equivalent more quickly in Perl. He's not talking about Perl in general - just what he can do.