The algorithms in the standard C++ library are generic and, as such, can be inefficient (or unavailable) with certain containers.
For example, the std::swap algorithm is generic but lists define an optimized member function std::list<>::swap that is much more efficient:
std::list list1; std::list list2; // ... std::swap(list1, list2); /* Inefficient */ list1.swap(list2); /* Optimized */
Another example would be std::sort. As it requires a random-access iterator it would not work on std::list<> containters at all. One would need to use std::list<>::sort instead:
std::list list; // ... std::sort(list); /* Error! */ list.sort(); /* OK */ 
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