It's definitely tricky. I think if you just stick to modern C++ and avoid anything advanced unless necessitated, it's a big improvement on your code. But as we know, developers with the discipline not to take advantage of every feature available to be "clever" is rare. And I agree, the standard library is still very much lacking. This is one thing I really like about working with C#, the vast majority of what I'm doing is available and simplified through the standard library.