I think it's not a good thing to mention age as if that matters much.
Would you argue that gpg is old and therefore good software?
I would argue instead that iproute2 was not picked up quickly because it's clunky and hard to reason about. openBSD managed to improve ifconfig enough that a change was not needed. I applaud that to be honest.
Sadly too much of IT is run on childish bravado these days.
End result is that anything older than the person talking is stale and clunky code best replaced by something written in the latest bling language that "everyone" raves about...
