Bjarne Stroustrup on the Problems With Programming

Hobart writes "MIT's Technology Review has a Q&A with C++ inventor Bjarne Stroustrup. Highlights include Bjarne's answers on the trade-offs involved in the design of C++, and how they apply today, and his thoughts on the solution to the problems. From the interview: 'Software developers have become adept at the difficult art of building reasonably reliable systems out of unreliable parts. The snag is that often we do not know exactly how we did it.'"

Comments

Ridiculous.

[sammy baby]

Stroustrup:

On the other hand, looking at "average" pieces of code can make me cry. The structure is appalling, and the programmers clearly didn't think deeply about correctness, algorithms, data structures, or maintainability. Most people don't actually read code; they just see Internet Explorer "freeze."

Now that is just ridiculous. I'm using IE7 to post this article, and have been using it since its release, and I can say

Re:Ridiculous.

[grammar fascist]

Now that is just ridiculous. I'm using IE7 to post this article, and have been using it since its release, and I can say

You can say that it's magical, because it managed to post for you just before it crashed. Though that's pretty nifty, I've seen Firefox tack on a "NO CARRIER" before. Maybe you should submit a feature request.

Only my second favorite

[jgannon]

This is only my second favorite Stroustrup interview. The first is here: http://www.chunder.com/text/ididit.html (Yes, I know it's a hoax.)

Re:Which university is that?

[jcgf]

Why have pascal in there at all? Let it die just let it die.

Re:Which university is that?

[Pollardito]

starting them out at assembler is jumping the gun. surely they should learn to use an abacus and a slide rule before moving on to Babbage's mechanical computer and then assembler programming on punch cards