[jandrewrogers]

You can replace almost everything in C++ with stricter implementations of your own design if you don't like the behaviors or guarantees of the standard/default implementation. Many people do because the language is very amenable to it and the codegen is usually optimal. Living entirely within the standard library and the constraints it imposes to support backward compatibility is a choice, not a requirement. The standard design is always going to be less than ideal for some subset of applications, it is an unavoidable tradeoff.

The metaprogramming facilities of C++ are strong enough now that there is little that can't be customized without macros in a way that is nearly transparent.

[celrod]

Depending on which STL you use, there may also be assertions you can enable, e.g. via defining _GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/using_macros...

[tialaramex]

The "Eh, we'll just throw it away and build a new one" attitude in C++ is part of how you got into this mess. Slices are a vocabulary type, without one what can you do? Well of course you just pass raw pointers around. Huh I wonder why we're having so many safety problems in C++...