Why doesn't C++ reimplement C standard functions with C++ elements/style?

Question

For a specific example, consider atoi(const std::string &). This is very frustrating, since we as programmers would need to use it so much.

Answer 1

The tongue in cheek answer is: Because STL is a half-hearted attempt to show how powerful C++ templates could be. Before they got to each corner of the problem space, time was up.

There are two reasons: Creating an API takes time and effort. Create a good API takes a lot of time and a huge effort. Creating a great API takes an insane amount of time and an incredible effort. When the STL was created, OO was still pretty new to the C++ people. They didn't have the ideas how to make fluent and simple API. Today, we think iterators are so 1990 but at the time, people thought "Bloody hell, why would I need that? for (int i=0; i<...) has been good enough for three decades!"

So STL didn't became the great, fluent API. This isn't all C++ fault because you can make good APIs with C++. But it was the first attempt to do that and it shows. Before the API could mature, it was turned into a standard and all the ugly shortcomings were set into stone. And on top of this, there was all this legacy code and all the libraries which already could do everything, so the pressure wasn't really there.

To solve your misery, give up on STL and have a look at the successors: Try boost and maybe Qt. Yeah, Qt is a UI library but it also has a pretty good standard library.