Bjarne Stroustrup Quotes

Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.

The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer

Tom [Cargil]s suggestion with a further idea: Propsers of new [C++] features should be required to donate a kidney. That would - Jim [Waldo] pointed out - make people think hard before proposing, and even people without any sense would propose at most two extensions.

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either.

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.

Too many managers and executives try to reduce programming to a low-level assembly-line activity. That's inefficient, wasteful, costly in the long run, and inhumane to programmers.

Our civilization depends critically on software, and we have a dangerously low degree of professionalism in the computer fields

Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that's quality software!

The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining

A program that has not been tested does not work.

C++ is designed to allow you to express ideas, but if you don't have ideas or don't have any clue about how to express them, C++ doesn't offer much help.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

C++ is my favorite garbage collected language because it generates so little garbage

First, I'd like to see the basic tools such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, database interfaces, GUI builders, CAD tools, and so forth fully support the ISO standard.

An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

The standard library saves programmers from having to reinvent the wheel.

To many managers, getting rid of the arrogant, undisciplined, over-paid, technology-obsessed, improperly-dressed etc. programmers would appear to be a significant added benefit

More good code has been written in languages denounced as "bad'' than in languages proclaimed "wonderful'' - much more.

I would encourage nonproprietary standards for tools and libraries.

I assume that a sufficiently skilled will be able to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the hardware.

Clearly, I reject the view that there is one way that is right for everyone and for every problem.

Most of the programmers in ten years will be us, and we won't get much smarter.

Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language.

And no, I'm not a walking C++ dictionary. I do not keep every technical detail in my head at all times. If I did that, I would be a much poorer programmer. I do keep the main points straight in my head most of the time, and I do know where to find the details when I need them.

Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful.

The first law of computer science: Every problem is solved by yet another indirection.

It is my firm belief that all successful languages are grown and not merely designed from first principles

When done well, software is invisible.

There is no one "root of all evil" in software development. Design is hard in many ways. People tend to underestimate the intellectual and practical difficulties involved in building a significant system involving software. It is not and will not be reduced to a simple mechanical "assembly line" process. Creativity, engineering principles, and evolutionary change are needed to create a satisfactory large system.

Java isn't platform independent; it is a platform

Personally, I look forward to better tools for analyzing C++ source code.

I like doing research that has an impact. If I went to a company to make what they call 'real money,' I'd be just trying to make a system work as fast as possible to meet the product and serice deadlines.

It's easy to win forgiveness for being wrong; being right is what gets you into real trouble.

With the increasing importance of standards for system-level objects such as COM and CORBA, it is particularly important that the C++ bindings to those be clean, well documented, and simple to use.

Certainly not every good program is object-oriented, and not every object-oriented program is good.

Any verbose and tedious solution is error-prone because programmers get bored.

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.

It is easy to study the rules of overloading and of templates without noticing that together they are one of the keys to elegant and efficient type-safe containers.

This evolution may compromise Java's claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the effort will make Java a better language than it is today.

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

Destructors for virtual base classes are executed in the reverse order of their appearance in a depth-first left-to-right traversal of the directed acyclic graph of base classes.

People who passionately want to believe that the world is basically simple react to this with a fury that goes beyond what I consider appropriate for discussing a programming language.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

However, when Java is promoted as the sole programming language, its flaws and limitations become serious.