You are in a sense both right and in another sense not quite so. You are right in that the language designers went to great lengths to maintain backward compati

You are in a sense both right and in another sense not quite so. You are right in that the language designers went to great lengths to maintain backward compatibility. So all my C++98/C++03 skills are still relevant today. When i see kids say how "modern and better" is C++11/xx i always reply, go read Coplien, Barton & Nackman, Koenig to understand where it all came from. On the other hand the cognitive overload imposed by the new features is substantial and there is a non-trivial learning curve even for experienced developers. Beginners have even more difficulty getting started. Result? Everybody lives within their "familiar subset" of the language. So codebases can be in C++ and yet two different developers can have difficulty understanding each other's codebase.