"Prefers C++" means "implemented his winning entry in C++".

This isn't terribly unusual. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICFP_Programming_Contest it seems that C-family entries won in 1998, 2003, 2007, 2008, and now 2009.

A yearly simulation competiton focused on control system design for cleaning up debris. Interesting, but I didn't understand the problem spec well from the landing page.

The IFCP competition isn't focused on anything in particular - this years competition happened to be based on a satellite simulation, but previous years topics have included DNA repair, AI-based cops and robbers and (my favourite, from 2006) computational archaeolinguistics.

It's really just about problem solving with programs and the winner gets the honour of their chosen programming language being declared the "programming language of choice for discriminating hackers".

I've had great fun attempting the problems in previous years and I'd encourage anyone who enjoys programming to have a go at it.

That clears it up, thanks so much for summarizing the competition. Bragging rights for a language, heh! C++ has hubris now, who woulda figured.