Why std::cout instead of simply cout?

It seems possible your class may have been using pre-standard C++. An easy way to tell, is to look at your old programs and check, do you see:

#include <iostream.h>

or

#include <iostream>

The former is pre-standard, and you'll be able to just say cout as opposed to std::cout without anything additional. You can get the same behavior in standard C++ by adding

using std::cout;

or

using namespace std;

Just one idea, anyway.

In the C++ standard, cout is defined in the std namespace, so you need to either say std::cout or put

using namespace std;

in your code in order to get at it.

However, this was not always the case, and in the past cout was just in the global namespace (or, later on, in both global and std). I would therefore conclude that your classes used an older C++ compiler.

Everything in the Standard Template/Iostream Library resides in namespace std. You've probably used:

using namespace std;

In your classes, and that's why it worked.