I'd define modern as using RAII extensively and using C++11 at least.

As for algorithms, I honestly don't know what you mean. They're all documented online with respective big-O running times[1]. If you're talking about making unintended copies of things, then yes, C++ does expect you to know what's going on... it's the whole point of the language. If that's too much for you then don't use it, but that doesn't make it a bad language (I'm not denying it has some hair-pulling moments) Use std::move() when appropriate.

[1] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/algorithm/sort (see 'Complexity' section.