While working on the project I am presently involved with, there's a lot of C++ code which has evolved over a significant period of time (over 10 years now). The evolution you speak of is clearly visible there: the older code is often "C with classes" - raw pointers, char* strings and use of associated C functions, arrays etc; newer code uses ATL smart pointers and such to manage resources, but still sticks to hand-coded loops most of the time, and iterator is a rare sight; and the newest one is chock-full of STL containers, algorithms, shared_ptr (including custom deleters to manage handles etc), heavily genericized function and class templates, and so on. Most traditional "C with classes" coding techniques, such as raw unencapsulated pointers with manual lifetime management, are very much frowned upon in code reviews these days. Judging by this, it seems that your observation is accurate.
The most recent development seems to be a fad for C++0x lambdas - which has a positive side in that it also tilts the balance in favor of using standard algorithms over hand-coded loops, since now you can have all your code inline with algorithms as well.
