Although I don't identify with the "fire" part of that analogy, I agree it seems excessive to keep up with all the fine technical details of new features.

Programming language improvements can, at best, give us small decreases in accidental complexity.

Good software engineering practises (ruthless prioritisation, proper modularisation, continuous integration) etc. can have huge effects on both inherent and accidental complexity. It is much more important to spend time on those things. They are independent of specific programming language features.