No joke. I used C++98 for a job a while back and got comfortable with it, I asked "hey why don't we use c++14"(this was years ago). The answer was basically, modern c++ is too complex to keep code bases sane without spending a week writing rules and having dozens of meetings, so they opted for the 20 yr old version.

More recently I've learned rust. I haven't missed c++ at all. Even the more modern stuff I've learned later on...