They were adding features to the language (e.g., "Koenig lookup") in the CFront era to accommodate iostreams.

I was sad that they were spending a bunch of resources on that relatively useless stuff, rather than a sorely needed set of standard collection classes, not to mention a string class. And by "standard" I don't mean actual standards -- it was far too early in the game for that -- but even just enough to get by.