Meaning if Stepanov had not played with Ada for its first implementation, followed by Bjarne advocating him to use C++ instead, the STL would never happened in its form.
And yes, it wasn't quite the STL, we had quite a few variations of it, the most well known coming from SGI, until things kind of settled at ANSI.
I disagree. Stepanov wanted to write that kind of software. He would have done it in any vehicle he found suitable. If he hadn't started with Ada, he still would have wound up writing it in some language.
And C++ was among the better candidates for the language to use. It was more suitable than Ada.
And, do you have any basis for the statement that Stroustrup advocated C++ to Stepanov?
"And, of course, Andy and Bjarne Stroustrup are responsible for putting STL into the standard."
"The support of Bjarne Stroustrup was crucial. Bjarne really wanted STL in the standard and if Bjarne wants something, he gets it. He is as stubborn as a mule. He even forced me to make changes in STL that I would never make for anybody else - I am also stubborn, but he is the most single minded person I know. He gets things done. It took him a while to understand what STL was all about, but when he did, he was prepared to push it through. He also contributed to STL by standing up for the view that more than one way of programming was valid - against no end of flak and hype for more than a decade, and pursuing a combination of flexibility, efficiency, overloading, and type-safety in templates that made STL possible. I would like to state quite clearly that Bjarne is the preeminent language designer of my generation."
I got the names mixed up, it was Andrew Koenig not Bjarne.
"My attempts to implement algorithms that work on any sequential structure (both lists and arrays) failed because of the state of Ada compilers at the time."
"In 1987 at Bell Labs Andy Koenig taught me the semantics of
C. The abstract machine behind C was a revelation. I also read lots of UNIX and Plan 9 code: Ken Thompson’s and Rob Pike’s programming style certainly influenced STL. In any case, in 1987 C++ was not ready for STL and I had to move on. "
"In 1993, after 5 years working on unrelated projects, I returned to generic programming. Andy Koenig suggested that I write a proposal for including my library into the
C++ standard, Bjarne Stroustrup enthusiastically endorsed the proposal and in less than a year STL was accepted into the standard. STL is the result of 20 years of thinking but of less than 2 years of funding."
And yes, it wasn't quite the STL, we had quite a few variations of it, the most well known coming from SGI, until things kind of settled at ANSI.