I've started coding in C++, coming from a Java background (actually I'd studied C++ at my university, but we never got to the STL etc.)
Anyway, I've gotten to the point where I'm arranging data in all sorts of collections, and I immediately tell myself "Ok, this is a kind of a Set; and this is a List, or an ArrayList; and this is a map etc." In Java, I would simply have whatever class I'm writing implement the Set or Map or List interface; but I would probably not go as far as inheriting ArrayList or HashSet or what-not, the implementations there are kind of involved and I wouldn't want to mess them up.
Now, what do I do in C++ (with the Standard Library)? There do not seem to be abstract base classes for Sets, Maps, Lists etc - the equivalent of Java interfaces; on the other hand, the implementations for the standard containers look pretty horrid. Ok, maybe they're not so horrid once you get to know them, but suppose I just wanted to write something like a non-virtual class extending AbstractSet in C++? Something I would be able to pass to any function which takes a Set? How should I go about doing that?
Just to clarify - I don't necessarily want to do what's common practice in Java. But, on the other hand, if I have an object which, conceptually, is a kind of set, I want to inherit something appropriate, get default implementations gratis, and be guided by my IDE to implement those methods which I should implement.