Special Stroustrup Seminar

C++ Inventor Bjarne Stroustrup to present special seminar on Wed. 5/23

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup, professor and College of Engineering Endowed Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University, will preview his paper, Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006 on Wednesday, May 23. This special seminar will be held at 3:00 p.m. in the Frank J. Malina Auditorium, room 124 of the H.R. Bright Building on Ross St.

ABSTRACT

Every 15 years, the ACM holds the History of Programming Languages conference (HOPL). The acceptance criteria are Draconian and this time the talks and the Q&A sessions will be recorded. This C++ talk will be the 1st ever second talk on a language. The above seminar and following Q&A will be a test run. Please come and ask hard questions.

A draft of the (huge) paper can be found at http://www.research.att.com/~bs/hopl-almost-final.pdf.

The talk outlines the history of the C++ programming language from the early days of its ISO standardization (1991), through the 1998 ISO standard, to the later stages of the C++0x revision of that standard (2007). The emphasis is on the ideals, constraints, programming techniques, and people that shaped the language, rather than the minutiae of language features. Among the major themes are the emergence of generic programming and the STL (the C++ standard library’s algorithms and containers).

BRIEF BIO

Bjarne Stroustrup designed and implemented the C++ programming language and remains active in the ISO C++ standards committee working on C++OX. He wrote The C++ Programming Language and The Design and Evolution of C++. In 2004 he was elected member of The National Academy of Engineering. More biographical information about Dr. Stroustrup may be found at http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bio.html.