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Bjarne Stroustrup Quotes

born 1950 Denmark

Bjarne Stroustrup (born 30 December 1950) is a computer scientist and creator of the C++ programming language.

Denmark

Also known as: Stroustrup, Bjarne

Random Bjarne Stroustrup quote

25 quotes

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

C++ 0x - An Overview (2007)

Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.

The Design and Evolution of C++ (1994)

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

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

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

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer.

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

A program that has not been tested does not work.

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

The major cause of complaints is C++ undoubted success. As someone remarked: There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.

In C++ it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg.

I do not think that safety should be bought at the cost of complicating the expression of good solutions to real-life problems.

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

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ (2007)

"How to test?" is a question that cannot be answered in general. "When to test?" however, does have a general answer: as early and as often as possible.

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful — many more.

If someone claims to have the perfect programming language, he is either a fool or a salesman or both.

If you do anything useful it will haunt you forever after, and if you have a major success you get decades of hard manual labor — meaning you have to work on the manual.

Proof by analogy is fraud.

The C++ Programming Language (2013)

Far too often, "software engineering" is neither engineering nor about software.

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ (2007)

I'm convinced that you could design a language about a tenth of the size of C++ (whichever way you measure size) providing roughly what C++ does.

Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages (2009)

There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ (2007)

When done well, software is invisible.

The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Bjarne Stroustrup (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.