Bjarne Stroustrup Expounds on Concepts and the Future of C++

In his recent article on DevX, Danny Kalev asks Bjarne the hard questions about concepts and C++'s future.

A year ago, everyone was all but certain that the C++0x standard was just around the corner, and that it would include concepts (see Danny Kalev's earlier interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, from August 2008). However, In July 2009 the C++ standards committee decided to remove concepts from the C++0x by an unprecedented move. Danny's recent controversial editorial was among the first to report that decision and its possible consequences. Despite vociferous disagreements over the removal of concepts themselves, nearly everyone agrees that the committee's decision left open many questions not only about concepts, but also about the committee's charter, and even the future of C++ itself.

Therefore, Danny has interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup again, this time to capture his thoughts about concepts, their removal, and the impact of that decision, along with his take on other pressing questions that currently concern the entire C++ community.

Source: DevX: Bjarne Stroustrup Expounds on Concepts and the Future of C++

Book Signing and Reception for Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup

by Tony Okonski

Please join us for a book signing and reception honoring Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup on the release of his new book, Programming Principles and Practice Using C++. The reception will be held from 3-5pm on Friday, February 20, 2009 at the J. Wayne Stark Galleries on the campus of Texas A&M University.

Programming Principles and Practice Using C++ was written for those who have never programmed, and it has been tested with more than 1,000 first-year students at Texas A&M University. It is the current textbook for the ENGR 112, Foundations of Engineering 2, and CPSC 113 Intermediate Programming and Design courses; however, practitioners and advanced students will gain new insight and guidance by seeing how a recognized master approaches the elements of his art.

This book was written primarily to teach the fundamentals, concepts, and techniques of programming in greater depth as compared to traditional introductions. This approach creates a solid foundation for writing useful, correct, maintainable, and efficient code. The book also serves as a general introduction to programming, covering both object-oriented programming and generic programming. It is a solid introduction to the C++ programming language, one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. The book presents modern C++ programming techniques from the start, introducing the C++ standard library to simplify programming tasks.

The book covers a wide range of essential concepts, from design and programming techniques, language features, and libraries, including input, output, computation, and simple graphics, to more specialized topics, such as text processing and testing, and provides abundant reference material. Source code and support supplements are available from the author's website. Some comments from readers:

"A remarkable balance of accessibility and accuracy."

"Up until now, I looked in vain for one that combines a good explanation of programming principles with a good explanation of C++."

"The sheer joy that shines throughout the pages. It's clear that Bjarne Stroustrup is still jazzed about programming after all this time."


Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author of The C++ Programming Language. He is the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science and Professor at Texas A&M University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and an AT&T Fellow. He is a founding member of the ISO C++ standards committee.

Source: Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University