I have seen a lot of C++ code that has a lot of "this is clearly just C" in it. None of it is because of "greybeards and lone warriors". All of it was because it started as a C codebase, and sometime in the mid to late 90s when object-oriented fever swept the world they started just adding C++ on top of the existing C codebase.

Given that the general industry approach to technical debt is "yes, more please", it is unsurprising to me that any sufficiently old C++ project still has lots and lots of plain C inside it.

There's also a ton of landmark tutorials out there which taught generations of coders how to write C++ before "modern C++", and are still the top tutorials you find when you look them up. Plus I see C libraries more commonly than C++, so you end up dealing with raw pointers despite your better efforts

Except the complaint equally applies to green field projects.