[astrobe_]

You don't have to "keep up with it", if by this you mean what I think you mean.

You don't have to use features. Instead, when you have a (language) problem to solve or something you'd like to have, you look into the features of the language.

Knowing they exist beforehand is better but is the hard part, because "deep" C++ is so hermetic that it is difficult to understand a feature when you have no idea which problem it is trying to solve.

[01100011]

Wrong. Most programmers spend tremendous amounts of time reading and maintaining someone else's code. You absolutely have to keep up with it.

[astrobe_]

Thankfully "most" C++ code was written before C++11 (good luck with programs that fully utilize "modern" C++'s constructs and their semantics, because at this point only compilers can reliably manipulate them).