Downsides to the C++ STL?

craybob queries: "I'm a developer for a small software group that will soon migrate from using Rouge Wave to using the C++ STL. I just left the week-long Software Developers 2002 conference, where I heard the great minds in software tell us all of the best ways to take full advantage of the STL. (I just wanted to give a quick thanks to Stephen Dewhurst and Scott Meyers) From this I came away with the feeling that this is the Holy Grail of C++. I'm sure these guys are right and that it is great, but the truth is that I'm a skeptic, so what are the downsides to the STL?"

Comments

pros and cons of STL

[Anonymous Coward]

advantages:

• unified scoping and dereferencing between classes
  
• metacircular allocation, instead of the old malloc-free style
  
• deferred addressing (this is more of a compilation feature than programming boon)
  

disadvantages:

• still no multiple inheritance
  
• problems with template incompatibility between STL/non-STL applications
  
• gay syntax
  
• underpowered for serious e-commerce and business-to-business deployment.

Try out the SOOP

[ceswiedler]

The "Standard Object Oriented Library" for C++. You'll find it here. (Warning, blatant goatse.cx link)

What the hell are these specification designers thinking? Just throw everything in there? We make a language (an extension, anyway) with somewhat decently implemented classes and objects. Years later we remember we haven't written a library for it yet. At the same time some brightlight wants to add templates to the already horribly complex language, and so we create our standard library using this new feature and nothing else. The STL isn't just based on templates for rational things like containers, it uses templates for everything imaginable. Who needs a template parameter for an allocator function? Who needs strings to be such a generalized class that I can use them to handle an array of kitchen sinks, and provide automatic Dran-O too? The "joy" of templates drove every other thought out of their heads when they came up with this crap.

Programmers code in different ways. Not everyone wants to use templates; they're by far the most debated "feature" of C++. Why the hell did Stroustroup et al decide to ram them down our throat? When I program in C++, I use standard C libraries or roll my own object-oriented ones.

Just wait till next year, when they add threading support based on functional programming and graphics code which uses an AI core to figure out what you want to draw before you know it yourself.

Clear case for post annotations...

[Lethyos]

I think we all need to get CmdrTaco to impliment a post annotation system. Something like this was talked about back in the days of the Troll Post Investigation. We really need the capsity to go back and ammend posts!