Ironically, it was in Waterloo that the STL was adopted as part of the ISO/ANSI Standard
C++ Library, and from that day on it went onto a triumphal march. Alexander
Stepanov and Meng Lee had proposed the result of years of research at HewlettPackard,
a standard template library, to the standards committee. The committee
gracefully adopted the STL as part of the C++ Standard at a committee meeting in
Waterloo in the summer of 1994, after countless controversial discussions and much
work spent by committee members on making the STL fit for a standard. Most
importantly, the adoption was tied to the condition that the source code had to be
made publicly available. Since then the STL has become more and more popular in
the C++ community and conquered the hearts of quite a number of programmers.
Personally, I know of software developers who cannot imagine getting their work
done anymore without a general-purpose library like the STL. Obviously, not all
Waterloos are the same. This Waterloo was in Ontario – seemingly a good omen.