C++ Standard Library

Computer: How was the Standard Library defined and what impact will it have on the C++ community?

Stroustrup: The most novel and interesting part of the standard library is the general and extensible framework for containers and algorithms. It is often called the STL and is primarily the work of Alex Stepanov (then at Hewlett-Packard Labs, now at Silicon Graphics).


Alex worked on providing uncompromisingly general and uncompromisingly efficient fundamental algorithms which, for example, find an element in a data structure, sort a container, or count the occurrences of a value in a data structure. Such algorithms are fundamental to much computing.