Bjarne Stroustrup: The Continuing Evolution of C++
The designer of the world-renowned programming language C++ is visiting Bergen in August and will give a talk on the continued development of the language.
Main content
The development of C++ started in 1979. Since then, it has grown to be one of the most widely used programming languages ever, with an emphasis on demanding industrial uses. It was released commercially in 1985 and evolved through one informal standard (“the ARM”) and several ISO standards: C++98, C++11, C++14, and C++17. How could an underfinanced language without a corporate owner succeed like that? What are the key ideas and design principles? How did the original ideas survive almost 40 years of development and 30 years of attention from a 100+ member standards committee?
What is the current state of C++ and what is likely to happen over the next few years? What are the problems we are trying to address through language evolution?
Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ as well as the author of The C++ Programming Language (Fourth Edition), A Tour of C++, Programming: Principles and Practice using C++ (Second Edition), and many popular and academic publications. Dr. Stroustrup is a Managing Director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City as well as a visiting professor at Columbia University. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and an IEEE, ACM, and CHM fellow. He received the 2018 Charles Stark Draper Prize, the IEEE Computer Society's 2018 Computer Pioneer Award, and the 2017 IET Faraday Medal. His research interests include distributed systems, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages. He is actively involved in the ISO standardization of C++. He holds a masters in Mathematics from Aarhus University, where he is an honorary professor, and a PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge University, where he is an honorary fellow of Churchill College.
