Bear in mind that the person making the comments you quoted is not actually John Carmack, who I will agree is a "guru". Carmack's own comments later indicate that the style represented in Doom 3 is an intermediate point in his personal evolution. Indeed, this style was a common one 10+ years ago and may have been appropriate for the less reliable compilers and buggier STL implementations of the day. It's certainly still popular with many programmers, though, as you imply in your last sentence...