Of course not. It's just that its a god-awful way to introduce a general student population to Computer Science. Maybe its ok for CS majors, but even then I'm not sold. I think it should be reserved for a few semesters in, once students have an idea of what they CAN do, then focus on C++ in the sense that its where the real deal performance and mission critical stuff is built.
I assumed that he meant that the kind of homeworks that you can realistically give students in C++ is going to be restricted to very elementary things that are not very representative of the "real" software that people encounter in the "real" world.