Although Microsoft refers to their implementation of the standard library as the STL (and this is convenient naming, since one of its most important maintainers is STL, Stephan T. Lavavej) actually the STL and the C++ standard library aren't the same thing.
The Standard Template Library is Alexander Stepanov's generic programming achieved via the relatively new (at the time) C++ Templates feature. At this point (the late 1980s through early 1990s) Generic Programming is an obscure academic idea, it's not how normal software works. Stepanov is persuaded to present his library to WG21 ("the committee") in 1993 and their work is eventually standardised as C++ 98 a few years later.
The most important part of the STL is the algorithms, generic algorithms are an amazing idea. The collections, eh, they're nothing to write home about, there are a dozen takes on the iterator problem with different trade-offs, but this idea of generic algorithms unlocks so much power and that's why lots of languages grew generics or for new languages had them on day one.
Sure, but that's really more of a historical perspective. The STL is still there as part of the standard library, although basically just the containers portion. It's been so long since I used the original standalone (SGI) version of the STL, that I can't even recall exactly what was in it other than containers and iterators (any algorithms?).
The Standard Template Library is Alexander Stepanov's generic programming achieved via the relatively new (at the time) C++ Templates feature. At this point (the late 1980s through early 1990s) Generic Programming is an obscure academic idea, it's not how normal software works. Stepanov is persuaded to present his library to WG21 ("the committee") in 1993 and their work is eventually standardised as C++ 98 a few years later.
The most important part of the STL is the algorithms, generic algorithms are an amazing idea. The collections, eh, they're nothing to write home about, there are a dozen takes on the iterator problem with different trade-offs, but this idea of generic algorithms unlocks so much power and that's why lots of languages grew generics or for new languages had them on day one.