There's this theory that humans are antennas, and that we pick up "wavelengths from above" to build and create the world we live in. Not only did we decide on the same project name and idea, but we also used the same pre-processor hacks. How surreal.
As for your pqueue implementation, the efficacy of an optimizing compiler lies in the inherent complexity of the language. I can imagine the optimization backend for gcc is simpler (and more effective) than g++, but I am not an expert on compiler internals.