C++ is my daily language. Has been for my entire career since the mid 90s. About 10 years ago I gave up trying to understand it all and things have been fine. Good even. Even more so since I pushed warnings to max (where possible), tooling like clang-tidy, -format, and all the other static analysers, multiple compilers on multiple platforms, and extensive use of tests and so on. You know, general best practices. To the extent I've forgotten loads of things.

So what I want to say is, it's not necessary at all to understand the language completely or even mostly in order to do good, high quality, productive work with it. Not even close.

Maybe with the advent of AI tools like co-pilot I can even start to forget more ;)

What you are describing is the desire to rely on your tooling and tests, and you should be able to. Unfortunately, in the 25 years I've known C++, I feel like I've been promised this and that and the other thing was making C++ safe, correct, reliable, etc. And yet this goal seems elusive. I'm glad that you don't have to think about most of the language these days, but there are too many trapdoors and landmines waiting out there, and in C++ they have serious consequences. There are bugs in the code--probably in your code--right now. Some might be CVEs because of how little guarantees you have when you stumble into UB. I hope we get past the "works for me" and realize the downstream implications of software being riddled with potentially serious bugs that result from a ton of complexity coupled with explosive consequences.

> What you are describing

On the other hand, while I think you have the best intentions, I believe what you are describing is also the exact meaning of FUD. In that precise order: "in C++ they have serious consequences" is Fear, "There are bugs in the code--probably in your code--right now" is Uncertainty, and "Some might be CVEs" is Doubt.