I've been at it more than 20 years and I'm still delighted to learn new things about the language and the library.
And it's under active revision and improvement. There are great new things to learn every few years.
And it's under active revision and improvement. There are great new things to learn every few years.
And to be frank: I'd say that anyone opposed to continue to learn new things is entirely in the wrong field if he/she works on any technology-related job.
However, constantly learning and updating things has its drawbacks. One of the rare times I tried to be hip and use the latest stuff, I tried rewriting parts of a small Android app of mine using java 8 and lambda closures. I made it work, but it required upgrading my minimum build version (locking out older devices), the compiler could barely handle it (gave some strange indecipherable errors relating to lambdas), and ultimately it was just a step backward. That kind of thing really frustrates me, because it's wasted (at best, deferred) effort.
Being conservative with new additions to your codebase seems a bit backward, though. Why not use the new, improved shiny language feature™ if you can?*
Of course, if you are prohibited by business requirements (e.g. missing modern compilers for a certain target platform) that's another story. Basically, it always comes down to practicality.
* A prime example would be the new way you can implement Singletons with C++11. Once you've used that, you realize how horrid pretty much all C++98-based attempts at this are.
Yes, I realize Singletons are often a bad idea.