This, my point was that you can use C++ make_shared (and eventually C++14 make_unique) instead of manual management, you can get away with a lot more reference passing instead of of raw pointer manipulation, the std now has an actual hashmap implementation now, auto and lambdas make things faster, etc.
Modern C++ vs second iteration standard C++ in the wild west days when I was first learning about it is an entirely different affair.
I also contest having to know boost - I work in some KDE projects and boost is only a dependency on around 1 in 4 that I have found. Though qt in many ways becomes the surrogate stack to learn.
C++0x is easy to learn. For example, autos is just the ability to say "auto myFloat = 5.0;" and it will default to float.
Lambdas in C++ is fairly easy. right casts? trivial [especially with auto].
Templates of templates of templates are easy as well.
64-bit? ARM? The whole point of C\C++ is to make yourself not assembly. You shouldn't worry about 64-bit vs 32-bit as long as you use proper things.