A pretty good summary of the state of C++. I actually enjoy the language and most of the new features. The 'modern' part is not at fault here. This has always been a problem. The cult of generic metaprogramming was always a pain to deal with. In part, the new language features can help reduce over reliance on templates. As a community we must push for features that can get is out of this situation, like a sane modules system.

I think Bjarne Stroustrup is partly to blame here. He has succeeded in creating a versatile and popular language but has given little priority to problems like build time, error messages and debug performance. These sound like petty, practical problems that the tooling guys should eventually figure out. Except they aren't. They are hugely dependent on the language design.

Another thing we are missing is a high profile figure that will show the way on correct patterns and that will literally publicly shame the authors of too "meta" template heavy libraries. You are not smart if you are writing these monstrosities. It should not feel good. Making it simple requires much more intelligence.