72-Year-Old C++ Creator Bjarne Stroustrup Shares Life Advice (youtube.com) 47
72-year-old Bjarne Stroustrup invented C++ (first released in 1985). 38 years later, he gave a short interview for Honeypot.io (which calls itself "Europe's largest tech-focused job platform") offering his own advice for life:
Don't overspecialize. Don't be too sure that you know the future. Be flexible, and remember that careers and jobs are a long-term thing. Too many young people think they can optimize something, and then they find they've spent a couple of years or more specializing in something that may not have been the right thing. And in the process they burn out, because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing.
I meet a lot of sort of — I don't know what you call them, "junior geeks"? — that just think that the only thing that matters is the speciality of computing — programming or AI or graphics or something like that. And — well, it isn't... And if they do nothing else, well — if you don't communicate your ideas, you can just as well do Sudoku... You have to communicate. And a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code, they'll change the world. But you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to communicate with your would-be users and learn from them. And you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them.
So you can't just do code. You have to do something about culture and how to express ideas. I mean, I never regretted the time I spent on history and on math. Math sharpens your mind, history gives you some idea of your limitations and what's going on in the world. And so don't be too sure. Take time to have a balanced life.
And be ready for the opportunity. I mean, a broad-based education, a broad-based skill set — which is what you build up when you educate, you're basically building a portfolio of skills — means that you can take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. You can recognize it sometimes. We have lots of opportunities. But a lot of them, we either can't take advantage of, or we don't notice. It was my fairly broad education — I've done standard computer science, I've done compilers, I've done multiple languages... I think I knew two dozen at the time. And I have done machine architecture, I've done operating systems. And that skill set turned out to be useful.
At the beginning of the video, Stroustrup jokes that it's hard to give advice — and that it's at least as difficult as it is to take advice.
Earlier this year, Bjarne also told the same site the story of how he became a programmer by mistake — misreading a word when choosing what to study afer his high school exams. Stroustrup had thought he was signing up for an applied mathematics course, which instead turned to be a class in computer science...
I meet a lot of sort of — I don't know what you call them, "junior geeks"? — that just think that the only thing that matters is the speciality of computing — programming or AI or graphics or something like that. And — well, it isn't... And if they do nothing else, well — if you don't communicate your ideas, you can just as well do Sudoku... You have to communicate. And a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code, they'll change the world. But you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to communicate with your would-be users and learn from them. And you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them.
So you can't just do code. You have to do something about culture and how to express ideas. I mean, I never regretted the time I spent on history and on math. Math sharpens your mind, history gives you some idea of your limitations and what's going on in the world. And so don't be too sure. Take time to have a balanced life.
And be ready for the opportunity. I mean, a broad-based education, a broad-based skill set — which is what you build up when you educate, you're basically building a portfolio of skills — means that you can take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. You can recognize it sometimes. We have lots of opportunities. But a lot of them, we either can't take advantage of, or we don't notice. It was my fairly broad education — I've done standard computer science, I've done compilers, I've done multiple languages... I think I knew two dozen at the time. And I have done machine architecture, I've done operating systems. And that skill set turned out to be useful.
At the beginning of the video, Stroustrup jokes that it's hard to give advice — and that it's at least as difficult as it is to take advice.
Earlier this year, Bjarne also told the same site the story of how he became a programmer by mistake — misreading a word when choosing what to study afer his high school exams. Stroustrup had thought he was signing up for an applied mathematics course, which instead turned to be a class in computer science...
Summary of the summary (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Get a good education.
2. Make friends and talk to people.
That seems like reasonable advice.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
First, the correct quote is: "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"
Second, that bullshit statement needs to die in a fire. It get used as an excuse to not do ANY optimization.
The root of evil is shitty variables, excessive abstraction, not having a slow but working reference version, and not measuring -- not Knuth's misguided, misquoted "optimization" nonsense.
Re: Summary of the summary (Score:2)
Re: Summary of the summary (Score:2)
And then some people don't understand that you can get performance by extracting actually optimised code into a few functions and using them, leaving 99% of your code clean a
Re: (Score:2)
2. Make friends and talk to people.
Although, I think he spends most of the time just explaining how to pronounce his name. :-)
Great advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally be good at everything and do everything. Don't specialize too much but don't be mediocre either. Have the skills to pounce on an opportunity faster than the specialists and the people who hire them. Listen to others, because they will tell you what is important for you to be happy. If you're lucky and you are in the right place at the right time to become world-famous, which is totally something you should try and achieve, you may even be asked to give life advice to create ad revenue.
Microsoft ... (Score:2)
Too many young people think they can optimize something
Leave the task bar alone.
Re: (Score:2)
You can say that go 99% of the pointless (and crap) UI changes that were presumably done just to have an Agile goal to meet.
Young whippersnappers should look up ye olde UI guidelines and best practices (discoverability, etc.) that were established for a reason
Re: (Score:1)
And what exactly has UI to do with agile or not?
Typical agile hater.
I agree with: modern UIs are in general completely horrible.
Young whippersnappers should look up ye olde UI guidelines and best practices (discoverability, etc.) that were established for a reason
Makes one wonder why windows after 40 years still has the ok and cancel buttons wrong positioned.
Re: (Score:2)
why windows after 40 years still has the ok and cancel buttons wrong positioned.
Because someone will earn a promotion to vice president of UIs by switching them.
And then another person will make CEO by switching them back.
Well, Well, Well (Score:5, Funny)
Earlier this year, Bjarne also told the same site the story of how he became a programmer by mistake — misreading a word when choosing what to study afer his high school exams. Stroustrup had thought he was signing up for an applied mathematics course, which instead turned to be a class in computer science...
This totally explains why we ended up with OOP.
Re: (Score:3)
It probably also explains why he created a language that has endured for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not. OOP predates C++ by at least a decade.
However, C++ might have been among the first practical, usable (at the time), and efficient languages that supported OOP.
And there are problem domains in which, for decades, nothing else would have worked.
But today we've learned potentially better ways of doing things (combining low- and high-level languages; Rust; etc.)
I am not expecting to have to use C++ for the rest of my career, although I fully appreciate that much of the tooling, operating systems,
YES!!! (Score:2)
Specialization is for insects
Communication skills are key (Score:2)
Even if you're a tech genius, it is very rare to find a position where you don't have to interact with others to go from concept to deliverable.
Being able to socialize and effectively communicate with clients, managers, peers, and other resources to get the job done properly can make a mediocre tech far more valuable than that arrogant miserable asshole who never comes out of their cubicle.
I've worked with a few of those guys and I got along with them because I had to, but when they finally left (one way or
Re: (Score:2)
As a follow-up:
Don't stress too much if English (or whatever language is primary at your employer) is your second language. I've worked with people who had accents so thick you could cut them with a knife and grammar that was sometimes odd to my ear - but they knew their stuff and they were able to effectively communicate, understanding task parameters and explaining roadblocks.
Being perfectly fluent in the language is not what 'communicate effectively' means. It's a component, but one where you only have
Re: (Score:2)
Don't stress too much if English (or whatever language is primary at your employer) is your second language.
Considering the number of people for whom English is their first, and only, language and can't speak it, this is good advice.
Re: (Score:2)
Engineering at the saying goes is a team sport.
Re: Communication skills are key (Score:1)
Most of those arrogant miserable arseholes are WFH these days and long may they stay there while the rest of us head down the pub at lunchtime from the office.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You stay in your basement on your own if that what makes you happy aspie.
Wear sunscreen (Score:1)
The rest of what Bjarne Stroustrup said is useful too.
Re: (Score:2)
Such good, relevant life advice [youtube.com] has been parodied most splendidly rather long ago [youtube.com]. Enjoy.
Re: (Score:2)
Liberal education (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never seen such an effective advertisement for a liberal—and a liberal arts—education.
I'm still a few years behind Stroustrup in terms of age but I admit that I also long ago came to the same conclusion about what he wrote above. At first, I resented all the "general education" courses I was required to take as part of my university degree. But I've come to see how they made me a better, more well-balanced, and more intellectually capable person. And since politics seems to be a part of everyday life now let's work that into the equation as well. My university education made me a better voter as well, one capable of seeing the true evils of certain idiot politicians on both side of the aisle who would try to pull the wool over my eyes. My education—especially the "Logic and Semantics" class I was forced to take—let me recognize the many defects in their political arguments.
I recently had a conversation with a fellow I know in a Twelve Step fellowship I've long been involved with. He's a black man who has a long history of drug use—and racial discrimination—and at the age of 56 has finally obtained a four-year university degree. He despaired to me one day about ever being able to use it in the profession he's been trained and certified to work in. I responded that his degree of his is one thing that he has going for him regardless of whether he gets a job in his desired profession or not. That degree demonstrates to an employer who is hiring for any position, regardless of whether he's trained for it or not, that he's not only educated and well-rounded, but that he's intelligent and teachable, all skills and attributes that so many people without degrees lack, or at least cannot demonstrate with any obvious certainty.
But you use specialists to teach (Score:2)
We need balance, not "X is good so only focusing on it must be great!"
Today you take someone who loves X, and has them teach everyone about it from that perspective. Or someone who wants to expand the boundaries of X, and must teach to get the job at the university to do research too.
I get it that no single topic will solve everything, but that doesn't mean "return to what we always did before". It means "try something new again".
Authoritarian FTL.
Re: (Score:2)
I would argue that a liberal arts education might be the pendulum swinging a little too far the other way. Over-specialization is a bad idea, but so is over-generalization. Good luck getting a job with that "liberal arts" degree!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, given the older definition of "liberal" at least, I'd say a liberal arts education ideally would equip a person with the tools to think logically and clearly, as well as to study and understand the classics of antiquity (and since) and thus to be better equipped to approach any more specific area of study than a person not so educated.
Whereas, a course of job training, covering only what would be needed for a particular line of work, but not including any focus on critical (or any other actual) though
Re: (Score:2)
At first, I resented all the "general education" courses I was required to take as part of my university degree. But I've come to see how they made me a better, more well-balanced, and more intellectually capable person.
I believe forcing "general education" in college (outside of English/language) on kids who just graduated from high school and are in technical fields is very questionable. My primary reason is, of course, completely anecdotal and relates to myself. Studying computer science in a liberal arts university (a Jesuit one, at that) was a mistake for me and a forced situation because my family worked for the university and thus I saved on tuition. Compounded by the fact that I learned English only two years pr
Re: (Score:2)
A crappy general education is probably worse than useless.
That doesn't negate the existence of genuine, classical/liberal education, nor the value thereof.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I was.a long-time Republican who generally stopped voting for Republicans after George H. W. Bush became president and his actions started to get me seriously reconsider them. Newt Gingrich opened my eyes as to what Republican party truly is, George W. Bush made me think long and hard about my continued allegiance to such a backward-thinking political movement, and Trump took me the rest of the way and I changed my affiliation to "independent." I've generally voted for Democrats for thirty years
Re: (Score:2)
Ironically, for all the mass media's insistence that Republicans constitute the "far right," I more or less stopped giving a crap about the GOP due to its very rapid slide to the left.
A true right wing would value things like liberty (both personal and economic), justice (for all, not just the very wealth), and rule of law (ditto). Free enterprise for all, again not just the megacorps best equipped to donate to political causes. And war as a last resort, not a first.
Almost every Republican today can be cl
Re: (Score:2)
And if you design a programming language, (Score:3)
Tell me you haven't worked in forever (Score:2)
without telling me you haven't worked in forever?
"...remember that careers and jobs are a long-term thing."
How many separate career fields on average do most adults switch between through their lives? Last I heard a value (was it 8?) made me realize the lifelong career is a thing of the past.
No company will keep you for your whole career, let alone lifetime. If they do, you could have made a lot more $$$ switching companies every so often. Would have learned more too. Experienced more variety. Met more
Burnout = spinning your wheels (Score:2)
When you have no control, and are forced to do what you don't want to... you eventually enter burnout. Look up how they induce depression in rats. Compare it to how big tech feels to work in. Or the big finance companies. Any high pressure company.
"And in the process they burn out, because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing."
Actually I think that's down to the "socialize to prevent and fix depression" idea. There are many non-drug ways to help dep
Re: (Score:2)
For most of history people had no choice but to do something they didn't want to. Typically subsistence farming. They had to do this, or else they and their families would starve.
That's still the case in much of the developing world.
Most of us elsewhere today, and I'll freely admit that that includes me, are really, really spoiled by comparison.
Satisfaction in life more typically comes not from work per se, but the people in one's life (possibly including cow-orkers, but hopefully others as well).
Fully ag
Wise advice from an IT legend. (Score:2)
Listen to this, people.