I currently use C++17 for all new projects, in a purely modern style which minimizes the complexity that must be dealt with. It is still a very complex language

I currently use C++17 for all new projects, in a purely modern style which minimizes the complexity that must be dealt with. It is still a very complex language to learn, I certainly don't know every corner of it. For some types of high-performance infrastructure software like database engines, there really isn't a better alternative unfortunately. While there are other non-GC languages like C and Rust, equivalent software requires significantly more lines of code due reduced expressiveness, sometimes with a performance impact, and there are some types of code safety that are difficult to enforce in those languages. Because C++ is so expressive in a systems programming context and is rapidly adding valuable features, it makes it difficult for other languages to catch up to the point where there is a direct architectural translation from the latest version of C++ to some other language. I know quite a few shops that actively pull their code bases forward when a new C++ version lands, which is usually pretty painless, to take advantage of new features/safety and added tidiness.