Stroustrup: Why the 35-Year-Old C++ Still Dominates ‘Real’ Dev

by By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

C++ designer Bjarne Stroustrup, now a technologist at Morgan Stanley and a professor at both Columbia University and Texas A&M University,  spoke with InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill about C++’s role today and about other happenings in software development, including Google’s Go and Apple’s Swift languages.

Stroustrup says the programming language remains vital and relevant 35 years after he first designed it in 1979 because of its ability to handle complexity, making it the go-to solution for telecom, financial, and embedded applications and online systems such as Amazon and Google.

He says Google’s Go language, which has been receiving a great deal of attention, can “do a few things elegantly,” but loses “the edge in performance.” Stroustrup says he used C++ for projects that “required a real programming language and real performance,” by way of noting the language is more suitable for large-scale projects than small apps or hobbyists.

He is continuing to work to build the capabilities of C++ with the release of a new minor edition, C++ 14, this year. The update offers several improvements, including new templates and better memory initialization.

Asked what role security should play in software development, Stroustrup says, “security is a systems issue.” He also calls for greater professionalism among software programmers. “There are things in our society that mustn’t break, and most of them depend on software,” he says.  InfoWorld Article