The key feature of pass-by-reference is whether the callee can replace the value bound to the caller's argument (not mutate it). In other words, pseudocoded:

The key feature of pass-by-reference is whether the callee can replace the value bound to the caller's argument (not mutate it). In other words, pseudocoded: x=1 changeMe(x) write(x) // 2 With that in mind, it's clearer that JS is pass-by-value with object reference values (or pass-by-sharing, though I never hear that in practice) as the caller remains bound to the passed object, but a C++ reference argument is an actual pass-by-reference of the original binding. So's an argument passed to a Pascal/Delphi out or variable parameter, and I'm sure other examples exist as well. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "nowadays" but I'd still consider C++ a modern language within "everything".