{"id":1856,"date":"2014-08-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.simple-talk.com\/uncategorized\/bjarne-stroustrup-and-programmers-with-class\/"},"modified":"2016-07-28T10:46:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T10:46:51","slug":"bjarne-stroustrup-and-programmers-with-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/opinion\/geek-of-the-week\/bjarne-stroustrup-and-programmers-with-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Bjarne Stroustrup, and Programmers With Class"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2038-bjarne.jpg\"<\/p>\n

You can never be indifferent to Bjarne Stroustrup’s C++. You either loathe it and swear revenge, show a sage indifference or welcome it with a benevolent smile.   Linus Torvalds has called it a horrible language, Don Knuth said it was too ‘baroque’ for him to use. <\/p>\n

There are, of course, the many who use it as the obvious choice for developing demanding Windows system drivers and utilities. C++ is the main development language used by many of Google’s open-source projects and last year the company released a research paper which suggested that the language is the best-performing programming language in the market after it had implemented a compact algorithm in four languages – C++, Java, Scala and its own programming language Go – and then benchmarked results to find “factors of difference”.<\/p>\n

Google hosted a live question and answer session on 20th August. to increase the understanding of C++. Not surprisingly, Bjarne is still one of its strongest advocates.   <\/p>\n

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RM:<\/dt>\n
Bjarne, you’re holding a live Google presentation on C++ followed by a question and answer session on August 20th.  What’s the aim of the session?<\/dd>\n
BS:<\/dt>\n
My aim, and the aim of the online-community moderators, is to increase the understanding of C++. In particular, I’d like to see greater understanding of modern C++ (C++11 and C++14) and greater use of modern programming and design techniques. Today, we can write code that is much more elegant, shorter, and better performing than we could just a few years ago.<\/dd>\n
RM:<\/dt>\n
Several large computer companies are shifting in programming language architecture such as F#. Do you think this will see C++ and other languages pushed aside in favour of functional programming languages? <\/dd>\n
BS:<\/dt>\n
I doubt it. Functional languages seem to be fashionable today in a way similar to the way object-oriented languages were in the 1990s. Eventually, people learned that huge class hierarchies wasn’t the answer to every system design problem and similarly people will find that (say) higher-order functions and pattern matching aren’t the answer to everything.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, a general-purpose language need to support a variety of approaches and combinations of such approaches. C++ does that and so does some of the more popular languages based of functional programming techniques. Because of its huge code base C++ evolves slower than more modern languages but on the other hand it has more mature tool chains.<\/p>\n

Like the OO purists of the 1990s (and today), FP purists will not agree with my analysis, but I think we are searching for a synthesis of language features, library facilities, and tool support that goes beyond the language wars. We need more communication among the language-design and user communities to help develop that synthesis. It is unlikely to emerge from a single community, a single application area, or from academia alone. \t<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I recently had to adjust my estimate of C++ users upwards. I used to say “at least 3 million”, but people have convinced me that 4 or 5 million are likely to be more correct. Look under just about any “rock” in computing, and you find some C++. Unfortunately for the C++ community, much of that code is invisible to most of its users. It is really hard to count programmers. Most, who try, simply do a few unscientific web searches. They measure “noise” and hope that this has a good correlation with use. I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t dare to make a firm estimate of the number of C++ programmers to the nearest million, nor for any other major programming languages. <\/dd>\n

RM:<\/dt>\n
Do you think it would be possible to design a language much smaller than C++ and still do what C++ does? <\/dd>\n
BS:<\/dt>\n
I still think that’s possible. The real problem is whether such a language could be more than a research toy because of the huge established base of C++ code “out there.” My ideals are (still) type safety, lack of garbage collection, and a direct map to hardware. One problem for a new, simpler C++like language would be that C++ is itself evolving towards those ideals. For example, you can now write things like<\/p>\n
            vector<string> names = { \"CPL\",\"BCPL\",\"C\",\"C++\"};\nfor (auto& x : v) cout << x << '\\n';   \/\/ write all names\n\nand soon\n            void sort(Sortable c);           \/\/ sort anything that's Sortable; Sortable is a concept\n            sort(v);\nfor (x : v) cout << x << '\\n';  \/\/ write all names in order\n<\/pre>\n
I guess I have  better explain how “lack of garbage collection” can be considered an ideal. Garbage collection has two fundamental  problems<\/p>\n