[Ragnarork]

> which means that in the real world you have to learn and deal with all of it.

This is not what happens in the real world though.

While I agree that you have to deal with whatever is in your codebase at a given point, it also doesn't imply that you have to use everything and that everything can be useful for your project.

As standards keep coming and features get added, it's still increasingly prevalent to see guidelines and awareness around the topic of choosing your own subset of C++ to work with.

The main drawback is mostly that it incurs a cost in terms of brain power to discipline yourself to keep your work within a restricted set of language and standard library features.

It's extremely rare (and even debatable) whether a single person masters all the aspects and features of C++ (and if there's one, it's probably Alexandrescu).

[downerending]

In my world (see other reply), I get to deal with whatever is in dozens of codebases written in many times and places. The superset of everything they're using is pretty much everything.

Beyond that, even the "good" modern subset of C++ is crazy complex. I've sat in a room with some of the better C++ programmers in the world while they study and try to comprehend the new features like rabbis interpreting the Talmud.

If there's one concise, fundamental rule of software engineering, it's this: Complexity kills.