Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, who first began work on the language in 1979 and still remains very much involved in its development
Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it remains one of the most widely used programming languages today.
TechRepublicOwen Hughes
Context & Ripple Effects
TechRepublic's conversation with Bjarne Stroustrup lands in a run of retrospectives with computing's founding figures: Guido van Rossum on building Python in the 1980s and where it goes next, Donald Knuth still writing The Art of Computer Programming six decades in, and Barbara Liskov on the object-oriented principles she originated.
Developers and the C++ standards community get the language's direction framed by its creator firsthand at the 40-year mark, with Stroustrup's continued involvement signaling continuity rather than a stewardship handoff.
Second-order effects
The interview arrives as Rust's memory-safety push supplies the main competitive counter-narrative, forcing every C++ defense — including Stroustrup's own — to answer the safety question directly.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, systems programming settles into a two-track structure: C++ evolving incrementally under long-tenured original stewardship versus newer memory-safe entrants, with AI compilers treating the GCC/LLVM ecosystem as the baseline they must match.
The trend: Coverage of programming languages keeps returning to their founding creators because decades-old designs like C++ still anchor modern software, even as memory-safe successors and AI-built compilers reshape the ecosystem around them.
https://www.techrepublic.com/ ... As of September 2020, C++ is the fourth most popular programming language globally behind C, Java and Python, and - according to the latest TIOBE index - is also the fastest growing..
https://www.techrepublic.com/ ... While C++11 introduced several new features and capabilities that made the language simpler, faster and more expressive, the language maintains its reputation for being difficult to master - a fact its creator readily attests to..
“Evolution is necessary to meet the challenges of a changing world and to incorporate new ideas.” C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup on designing the programming language and how it became “an invisible foundation for everything”. https://www.techrepublic.com/ ... via @techrepublic
Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it remains one of the most widely used programming languages today. TechRepublic spoke to C++ creator, Bjarne Stroustrup, to find out why. https://www.techrepublic.com/ ...
“If we accepted every feature that would help someone, the language would sink under its own weight,” he says, referring to the Vasa, a grand 17th century Swedish battleship that sank in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage because it was overloaded with statues.
The fact that C++ allows you to write code very close to the hardware, and also code that's highly abstract, is both its blessing and its curse. This interview with its inventor is a nice summary of its current state. #CPlusPlus https://www.techrepublic.com/ ...