I think people don't understand just how badly C++ is broken in reality (vs conceptually) until their paycheck is tied to a real, years-old, multi-developer C++ project. It is not trash talking, it is pointing out truths.
It goes well beyond "any long-lived project has its issues." I think you and I (and many others) know that it is much larger than this, it is a fundamental issue with the language, the standards body surrounding it, and the mess of toolings.
This persists today because C++ is often used to bridge a performance gap between scripted languages and C among younger programmers and academics. (Admit it: we all like that sweet sweet dopamine hit when we take our Python to C++ and the syntax is almost the same.) But that slight performance boost and that "hey this looks like Python but it's really C++" feeling are soon demolished by the accretion of unresolved issues which have enumerated ad-nauseum on HN, including this article.
I've been working with C++ since 1993 (I got a big Borland C++ Compiler as an intern plus 12 VHS tapes of Bjarne himself explaining the language)... my experience with C++ continues right up to today as a contractor having to deal with Arm mbedOS (even Keil struggles to manage hypersensitivity, GNU is a trainwreck for embedded C++) and Tensorflow/OpenCV... and C++ has yet to shake off its flaws. In fact, I think it has added to them exponentially.