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

Bjarne Stroustrup

With the increasing importance of standards for system-level objects such as COM and CORBA, it is particularly important that the C++ bindings to those be clean, well documented, and simple to use.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Important Language Simple Use
Clearly, I reject the view that there is one way that is right for everyone and for every problem.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Problem Views Way
Destructors for virtual base classes are executed in the reverse order of their appearance in a depth-first left-to-right traversal of the directed acyclic graph of base classes.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Class Depth Order
“Legacy code” often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Alternatives Code Legacy
When done well, software is invisible.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Done Invisible Software
I like doing research that has an impact. If I went to a company to make what they call ‘real money,’ I’d be just trying to make a system work as fast as possible to meet the product and serice deadlines.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Company Impact Possible Real Trying
The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Important Learning Simplicity
People who passionately want to believe that the world is basically simple react to this with a fury that goes beyond what I consider appropriate for discussing a programming language.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Believe Discussing People Simple
Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that’s quality software!
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Google Quality Thinking
Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Class Function Hirerachies Successful Use
There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful – many more.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Awful Beautiful Developed System
I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Language Programming Support
You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Code Good Interface Need Really
Creativity, engineering principles, and evolutionary change are needed to create a satisfactory large system.
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Creativity Engineering Evolutionary Satisfactory
I would encourage nonproprietary standards for tools and libraries.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Library Standard Tools
I do keep the main points straight in my head most of the time, and I do know where to find the details when I need them.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Details Find Head Need

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

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

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Popular Authors

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