[fafner]

In C++ - unlike C - you can actually implement quite good matrix/vector support. E.g., Eigen3 http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page or Blaze https://bitbucket.org/blaze-lib/blaze or if you have a specific BLAS library tuned to your cluster then maybe FLENS http://apfel.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/~lehn/FLENS/index.html

[tjl]

True, but the problem I had (which I will admit was back in '99) is that there's no standard one. So, if you need to solve a system of ODEs and a linear system, you're invariably needing to convert between the two.

[RogerL]

This is still true. This library uses Eigen, that one uses Boost, the other one uses a home grown one. And then you want to use another library, it uses Eigen (yay!), but an old version of Eigen and it won't compile against the current version.

C++ really crippled itself in this regard by never making a standard. I never bought Stroustrup's claims of "but you can write your own" for these reasons.