You're absolutely not in the minority, old C++ was awful and there have been so many improvements to the language and standard library to help write simpler, cl

You're absolutely not in the minority, old C++ was awful and there have been so many improvements to the language and standard library to help write simpler, clearer code. I was just recently appreciating the if statement with an initializer in C++17, which helps me express exactly what I want for variable scope in one line instead of multiple awkward ones.