🚀 go-pugleaf

John Max Skaller (maxtal@suphys.physics.su.oz.au) wrote:

:    Unfortunately, there are some misconceptions about STL.
: One is that is OUGHT to be "user friendly".

:   Nope. STL is a LOW LEVEL TOOLKIT, akin to the ISO C Standard
: Library.

:   To make STL into a "user friendly" library is a silly idea.
: Instead, the idea is to use STL to implement a completely separate
: application library.

Indeed. STL is a low-level toolkit. 

However, IMHO it is NOT a silly idea to expect that there be a STANDARD
for a high-level container library that people actually use in their code.
A standard for a low-level toolkit is pretty uninteresting. What we have
with STL is a low-level standard that everyone needs to make useable, in
incompatible ways. Now THAT is silly. 

Could you imagine if the draft standard just gave us the basic_string<T> 
template and invited each of us to derive our own user-friendly string class?

Cay
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