Quote:Original post by yahastu
It seems that the designers of the Standard Template Library completely disagree with you!
Well, a few answers to this.
1. As others have mentioned, for some containers it's necessary.
2. The STL has many implementations. Making it a free class would have forced an implementation decision on all of them.
But, the important one...
YES! The designers of the C++ Standard Library made a lot of BAD DECISIONS. They weren't bad decisions given the information they had at the time, but proper usage style has shifted since then, and as a result there are a lot of embarassments in the standard library. That doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to use the STL; the embarassments are generally of the aesthetic rather than functional variety, and the fact that it's standardized counts for a lot more than the embarassments. But it does mean that it's generally a bad idea to look to the Standard Library for guidance on what good C++ looks like or acts like.