> C++11 is the first version of the language to feature a built in hash table. One has to wonder why the language is only now gettin (sic) such a basic data structure as a generic hash table.
It's not that C++ is getting a "generic hash table"
It's that the Linux Kernel project is implementing something they call a "generic hash table" that combines all the various features that the different hash tables in the kernel implement.
C++ has a very generic hash table, it's also not very useful by itself, and as a result it does 80% of the work and you implement the remaining 20% to match your application.
In the Linux Kernel, this 20% has been implemented a dozen different ways (working to solve a dozen different types of problems). This is a unified implementation that proposes to cover all dozen use cases with one set of code.