Yes, but... First, it is what it is. Second, it's not that C++ people made bad decisions in the 80s but the decisions were great afterwards. Let's take C++ metaprogramming in general, which templates are part of. Let's take if constexpr (or static if) as an example, which C++ took straight from Dlang. It is useful for introspection which is almost indispensable for metaprogramming.

Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu introduced static if in Dlang early and around 2012, they co-authored a static if proposal for C++ (https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2012/n33...). Bjarne Stroustrup, in his infinite wisdom, co-authored a rebuttal that rejected it, only to realize long overdue that it's an incredibly useful feature and introduce it in C++17.