Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Linux Journal interviews Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of the C++ programming language. "LJ: Did you have a computer at home when you were growing up?
BS: No, it was too early for that. Computers were very expensive and lived in university departments and large companies. The first computer I saw was my university's Math department's GIER. It was an old Danish computer that filled a room and was fed programs on paper tape. I learned to program in Algol 60 on that one."

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Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 29, 2003 12:06 UTC (Fri) by jamesm (guest, #2273) [Link] (5 responses)

LJ: How do you feel now, knowing that millions of people work using the tool you created?
BS: I'm very pleased, but as I said, I wish they'd do themselves a favor by using it better.

This seems like a very odd comment. If people widely used something of my design poorly, I'd be looking at what I did wrong.

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 29, 2003 12:40 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (guest, #14569) [Link]

I agree, they should redesign the hammer because I keep hitting my thumb with it instead of the nail. Never encountered are more flawed design in my life!

;-)

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 29, 2003 13:11 UTC (Fri) by jklaus (guest, #14332) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, C/C++ give you enough rope to hang yourself and then some. We should protect the programmer from making poor decisions and mistakes, abstracting them from the hardware. We'll call it Java, teach it to everyone in University instead of C/C++ (which seems to be the trend lately) and the world will be a better, although horribly inefficient, place.

Honestly though, no language is perfect and as Bjarne points out, even he won't recommend C++ for every application or situation. Part of the ability of a good programmer is to select the best tool for the job, and also the best way of using that tool to get the job done. There are always trade offs, and it seems that the more flexibility a language gives you to program efficiently and cleanly also means more flexibility for you to program poorly.

Java - A good choice as introduction language

Posted Aug 30, 2003 9:15 UTC (Sat) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link]

Well, in my opinion, the choice of Java as a beginners language at universitys isn't at all bad. The students get a cross platform, hard typed and very obect oriented language with a huge api. In educational environments the poor performance of the jvm doesn't matter that much. And you can avoid teaching bad programming style by not even introducing memory management and pseudooptimization until the students already know OO and design patterns, ie good programming, which often is a much better performance improvement than when or how memory is allocated.

Also, at universities they don't primaryly teach a language language, but good programming style. When the students continue to other courses other languages are introduced. With Java the basics are taught at a high level the student can easily learn syntax differences and new stuff (like memory management in C/C++) without much effort later on. That without having to deal with it in the beginning when everything else is new and dificult too.

For me, the choice of Java as first language was a key to switching to linux. I wouldn't have been able to do that switch if GUI programming would have been taught in a platform specific language.

But lets not start a religous war here. I'm sure you could choose any language and still make a very good first programming course. Java is just one of the good choices.

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 29, 2003 21:29 UTC (Fri) by sholden (guest, #7881) [Link]

Which he has done, since the main poor use is not using the newer features of C++ (where newer means half a decade old).

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Sep 1, 2003 20:14 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

If people widely used something of my design poorly, I'd be looking at what I did wrong.

There would be no better way to take our minds off SCO than a good old-fashioned programming language flamewar. Too bad it didn't catch fire better than it did. Your matches must be wet.

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 30, 2003 4:27 UTC (Sat) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link] (1 responses)

Bjarne Stroustrup is alright in my book. I emailed him to tell him about scox claiming to own C/C++. He was nice enough to email me back and explain that scox was full of it (not his exact words).

According to Bjarne, scox might own an old obsolete version of C++, but not anything that is presently in use.

Anyway, I thought is was nice for somebody of his stature to take the time to explain it to me.

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (Linux Journal)

Posted Aug 30, 2003 5:37 UTC (Sat) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link]

I also emailed him about why introducing the keyword namespace instead of adding a new section static to classes, and he also responded with his reasoning!