Some of the modern c++ is a what I'd consider essential really. And there's plenty more that is very nice to have. Move semantics and unique_ptr are really IMH

Some of the modern c++ is a what I'd consider essential really. And there's plenty more that is very nice to have. Move semantics and unique_ptr are really IMHO essential. Then lots of nice to have stuff such as, shared_ptr, threads, lambdas (make STL a lot more usable). Personally I'd not want to be maintaining a C++98 style of code base at this point. That being said you have probably already written all of the "nice to have" stuff so there's no real value benefit to go and replace it as such. So I understand your POV as well. That being said I'd probably modernize the code as I go whenever I touch any part of the codebase.