It matters 17 years later if you’re still in the same code base.
Best practices evolve. This code base predates modern smart pointers, and from experience bit fields were a requirement on some of those... tougher platforms.
It was a little bit tongue in cheek. But I'm currently in a code base that is almost exactly 10 years old. And of course all of the developers have personally grown in that time. But some of the practices were dependent on the technology choices available at the time.