History of the Standard Template Library (original) (raw)

In computing, the Standard Template Library (STL) is a software library for the C++ programming language. The architecture of the STL is largely the creation of Alexander Stepanov. In 1979 he began working out his initial ideas of generic programming and exploring their potential for revolutionizing software development. Although David Musser had developed and advocated some aspects of generic programming already by 1971, it was limited to a rather specialized area of software development (computer algebra).