An Interview With C++ Creator Bjarne Stroustrup 509
DevTool writes "Bjarne Stroustrup talks about the imminent C++0x standard and the forthcoming features it brings, the difficulties of standardizing programming languages in general, the calculated risks that the standards committee can afford to take with new features, and even his own New Year's resolutions."
Re:C++0when? (Score:3, Funny)
No, it's going to be called C++0xc or 0xd.
Interview (Score:5, Funny)
I always preferred this [chunder.com] interview with Bjarne Stroustrup.
(Yes, I know it's not real, but...)
Slashdotted, here is article text (Score:4, Funny)
Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the
world of software design, how does it feel, looking back?
Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before
you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C'
and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.
Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were
turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' -
graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the
problem.
Interviewer: Problem?
Stroustrup: Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol?
Interviewer: Of course, I did too
Stroustrup: Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods.
Their salaries were high, and they were treated like
royalty.
Interviewer: Those were the days, eh?
Stroustrup: Right. So what happened? IBM got sick of it, and
invested millions in training programmers, till they were a
dime a dozen.
Interviewer: That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year,
to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.
Stroustrup: Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.
Interviewer: I see, but what's the point?
Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I
thought of this little scheme, which would redress the
balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if
there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn,
that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with
programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10,
you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics
system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.
They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really
ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and
pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows
code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain
your sanity.
Interviewer: You're kidding...?
Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem.
Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer
could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember
what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?
Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do.
Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from
Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two
together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew
about DOS to earn a decent living too.
Interviewer: I don't believe you said that...
Stroustrup: Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most
people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste
of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I
thought it would.
Interviewer: So how exactly did you do it?
Stroustrup: It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought
people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a
brain can see that object-oriented programming is
counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.
Interviewer: What?
Stroustrup: And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear
of a company re-using its code?
Interviewer: Well, never, actually, but...
Stroustrup: There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the
early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor
Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold
trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I
felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn
from their mistakes.
Interviewer: Obviously, they didn't?
Stroustrup: Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies
hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30
million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult.
Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end.
Interviewer: They did? Well, there you are then, it proves O-O
works.
Stroustrup: Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took
five minutes to load, on an HP works
C++0x compiled! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is C++ ever the right tool for the job? (Score:4, Funny)
No. THIS is a joke.
Two bytes meet. The first byte asks, “Are you ill?”
The second byte replies, “No, just feeling a bit off.”
Re:Is C++ ever the right tool for the job? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:c++ 1x sucks (Score:4, Funny)
It's a long time before anyone starts to use nullptr.
If you ever ran Visual Studio 2010, you have used a product that uses nullptr in some parts of its source.
(while we're at it, it also has C++0x lambdas)
Re:C++0when? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait, it already is.
Re:C++0when? (Score:5, Funny)
My user name seems appropriate here.