Stroustrup On C++

Edit: Yep! This is definitely a case of Poe’s Law and this interview is a spoof.

An interview with the creator of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup done in 1998 for the IEEE Computer Magazine has recently came to my attention, however I’m not entirely convinced of it’s veracity. Here’s an excerpt of particular interest:

Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought ‘I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity..

And in the past 16 years C++ has grown to be more complicated if anything with new C++11 and C++14 standards. Can’t say I don’t agree with some of the other points Stroustrup raises about C++. Interesting implications if this is true.