I was, yeah, if you mean using C++ as a better C but being slow to adapt the STL, standard library and associated concepts. We were doing a lot of device driver

I was, yeah, if you mean using C++ as a better C but being slow to adapt the STL, standard library and associated concepts. We were doing a lot of device driver development and other constrained stuff back then (early 90s) so the "C++ as a higher-level language" vs. "C++ as incrementally improved C" was much discussed. Also, OO vs. generic programming was a hot topic, and still is. It's always hard to extend a language culture to include libraries, as some people will prefer to adapt or roll their own. If it's not automatically part of the language the community will fracture.