Why “using namespace std” is considered bad practice in C++

C++ has a standard library that contains common functionality you use in building your applications like containers, algorithms, etc. If names used by these were out in the open, for example, if they defined a queue class globally, you'd never be able to use the same name again without conflicts. So they created a namespace, std to contain this change.

The using namespace statement just means that in the scope it is present, make all the things under the std namespace available without having to prefix std:: before each of them.

While this practice is okay for example code, pulling in the entire std namespace into the global namespace is not good as it defeats the purpose of namespaces and can lead to name collisions. This situation is called namespace pollution.