Masterminds of Programming

Chapter 1. C++

C++ occupies an interesting space among languages: it is built on the foundation of C, incorporating object-orientation ideas from Simula; standardized by ISO; and designed with the mantras “you don’t pay for what you don’t use” and “support user-defined and built-in types equally well.” Although popularized in the 80s and 90s for OO and GUI programming, one of its greatest contributions to software is its pervasive generic programming techniques, exemplified in its Standard Template Library. Newer languages such as Java and C# have attempted to replace C++, but an upcoming revision of the C++ standard adds new and long-awaited features. Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of the language and still one of its strongest advocates.

Design Decisions

Why did you choose to extend an existing language instead of creating a new one?

Bjarne Stroustrup: When I started—in 1979—my purpose was to help programmers build systems. It still is. To provide genuine help in solving a problem, rather than being just an academic exercise, a language must be complete for the application domain. That is, a non-research language exists to solve a problem. The problems I was addressing related to operating system design, networking, and simulation. I—and my colleagues—needed a language that could express program organization as could be done in Simula (that’s what people tend to call object-oriented programming), but also write efficient low-level code, as could be done in C. No language that ...