c++ 03 was a lot easier.

For instance, if you want to avoid unnecessary copy operations when returning a string, just return it in variable that you pass by reference (eg. void doSomething(string& str);) likewise avoid the vector class making unnecessary copies, simply by creating the objects on the heap and use a vector of pointers instead of values. It's a bit more ugly, but it works, and you don't need to read a 24 page blog to understand all the corner cases where it can go wrong. modern c++ is all about syntactic suger.

Agreed that c++03 was much simpler, but that doesn't change the fact that there are useful things that are possible in modern c++ that simply were not possible before.

Like if I have a vector<std::string>, in c++03 when it resizes it must copy every string from the old storage to the new storage. For a vector of size N, that's up to N+1 allocations (allowing for the possibility that std::string uses the small string optimization).

Granted, std::string doesn't have to allocate when copied if it's a "copy on write" implementation. IIRC, there were some implementations that used that technique when c++03 was the latest, but I don't think there are any that still do, due to other problems with COW.

In modern c++, that same vector resizing operation requires exactly one allocation (for the new vector storage), because all the strings can be moved from the old storage to the new.

Yes, you could have a vector of pointers to std::string, but now you've got yet another allocation (and indirection on access) for every string. In practice that tradeoff almost never makes sense, unless perhaps the strings have shared ownership (e.g. vector<shared_ptr<string>>).

Ultimately, I think there's really no question that the vector resizing optimization described above is useful in certain scenarios. Having said that, I do agree that the associated complexity is annoying. Therefore, the real question is whether it's possible to have these benefits with less complexity, and I personally don't know the answer to that.