This kind of issue cuts both ways - how do you hire new people and get them productive quickly on a code base where they will almost certainly understand nothin

This kind of issue cuts both ways - how do you hire new people and get them productive quickly on a code base where they will almost certainly understand nothing? Getting rid of weird data structures that now have STL analogs then is a productive exercise - existing devs get to learn more STL and new devs have more familiar ground. You get to delete code too.