string

What the hell went wrong?  We started with just this:

   char a[100];
   strcpy(a, "a string");
   strcat(a, " more");
And someone said "Hey, it would be better if the programmer didn't have to declare that 100 manually...  Is there some way the string itself could just resize as characters are added?"

Now, you can't really fault whoever it was for thinking that.  It seems like a reasonable idea.  But tell me, how the fuck did we get from that idea to this?

http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/string

It's just...  horrible.