

Oral History of Bjarne Stroustrup - chowyuncat
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/video/30/

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vmarsy
An interesting anecdote about his time in Academia in the video:

 _Some of the stuff I thought was really interesting to work on was
unpublishable. I once wrote a paper on how to do abstract syntax trees 30
times better than GCC, and the paper was rejected on two reasons, three
reasons. The first was that we had misunderstood C++ . This was me and Gaby
Dos Reis, who was the French representative on the standards committee and one
of the best people on the standard. Also, he was the shipping manager for GCC.
They also claimed it had been done in GCC. I mean, this was totally bogus. And
then when we complained they came back and said, "Oh, that's engineering;
we're computer scientists." If we had been in engineering for cars and come up
with a 32-times improvement of one of the key components of gadget, we'd have
been heroes._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hdp8...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hdp87bNbs3A#t=6032)

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chollida1
I think this might be well traveled ground now, but people always ask me what
I'd recommend to learn good C++ style.

[http://www.amazon.ca/The-Design-Evolution-Bjarne-
Stroustrup/...](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Design-Evolution-Bjarne-
Stroustrup/dp/0201543303)

and

[http://www.amazon.ca/Modern-Design-Generic-Programming-
Patte...](http://www.amazon.ca/Modern-Design-Generic-Programming-
Patterns/dp/0201704315/)

are my two favorite books. And then if you aren't happy with these books this
stackoverflow link has more books than you could ever want:

[http://stackoverflow.com/q/388242/25981](http://stackoverflow.com/q/388242/25981)

This link from Microsoft is also pretty darn good:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh279654.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh279654.aspx)

~~~
krylon
I really liked The Design and Evolution of C++. Stroustrup has a very nice
writing style, and I think it is worth reading whether one likes (or even
knows) C++ or not. (My own knowledge of C++ is rather superficial, in case it
matters).

As an account of how a programming language evolves over time with the
changing - and often contradictory - needs of its users, it was very
interesting.

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mro
YouTube link if you don't have flash:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdp87bNbs3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdp87bNbs3A)

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pbhowmic
Brilliant. Perhaps the most or second-most important language in widespread
use today, this is the man who created it (and to this day my favorite
language). Yet, so down to earth, humble and open about his own shortcomings,
his lack of direction in the early years. I suppose the bets ones are like
that.

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AnimalMuppet
One of the best lines:

> If you give people the choice of writing good code or fast code there's
> something wrong. Good code should be fast.

