C++ programming in the early 90s was, in retrospect, not all that much fun. templates were very underpowered and not widely implemented, the library was minimal

C++ programming in the early 90s was, in retrospect, not all that much fun. templates were very underpowered and not widely implemented, the library was minimal. Everybody defined their own string and vector classes, or used products such as Rogue Wave Tools.h++, which at the time still offered macro-based container classes. There were a lot of fumbling exploration into what kind of OO design would prove long term workable, and in what existed of the C++ standard library at the time, some classes, like iostream with its multiple inheritance and virtual base classes, may not have given particularly sound examples to emulate. The arrival of the GoF design pattern book and of the STL were, in my opinion, massive game changers.