I am competent programmer in a general sense (knowing how to architect the software anywhere from entreprise stuff down to a firmware). I also use C++ and the fact that I do not really know lots of things about it does not bother me in a slightest. I just use the subset that fulfills my particular needs and am ok with this. If I need some feature that I do not know how it implemented if at all in C++ Google will give me solution in a minute.
You can get away with that with some languages, C# for instance has very little to trip you up. C++ on the other hand has dark corners that will cause problems. For instance not knowing about the issues with virtual destructors could come back to bite you.
It will but I happen to know about virtual destructors. I do some reading every once in a while to glance over the things. So some interesting pieces get stuck in my secondary RAM ;) But yes I know C++ could be a dangerous beast but so far it's been kind to me.
