Totally not, yeah!
My friend also was surprised/shocked that there were changes in the code necessary to keep those old sites up and running.
Next thing was installing and setting up the "OMGF" plugin to cache Google fonts for GDPR compliance. Stupid work, but quite a few billable hours.
I think the WordPress ecosystem really is... "struggling" (lack of a better word) with how the modern web and the world around it evolves.