I don't think there's any excuse for the kind of opacity shown above. using namespace RandomNameSpace; would solve one half and a typedef abbreviating the template instance class the other.

As for templates vs cpp, I'd much rather use the STL than a cpp equivalent (though sometimes the latter would be much better than neither). They're definitely something that need to be used with care and taste, but that's at least as true of all but the most trivial uses of cpp too.