>>>This reminds me of that scene in 'Tomorrow Never Dies' where the guy
>>>goes "Yes, the software has all the bugs you requested.  People will be
>>>forced to upgrade for years."
>>>
>>>______________________________________________________________
>>>On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview
>>>to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.
>>>Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective
>>>view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language
>>>he created.
>>>By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had
>>>bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its
>>>contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these
>>>things, there was a leak.
>>>Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and
>>>unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.
>>>You will find it interesting...
>>>__________________________________________________________________
>>>Interviewer:  Well, it's been a few years since you changed the
>>>        world of software design, how does it feel, looking back?
>>>Stroustrup:  Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before
>>>        you arrived. Do you remember?  Everyone was writing 'C'
>>>        and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.
>>>        Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were
>>>        turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' -
>>>        graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the
>>>        problem.
>>>Interviewer:  Problem?
>>>Stroustrup:  Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol?
>>>Interviewer:  Of course, I did too
>>>Stroustrup:  Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods.
>>>        Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty.
>>>Interviewer:  Those were the days, eh?
>>>Stroustrup:  Right. So what happened?  IBM got sick of it, and
>>>        invested millions in training programmers, till they were a
>>>        dime a dozen.
>>>Interviewer:  That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year,
>>>        to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.
>>>Stroustrup:  Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.
>>>Interviewer:  I see, but what's the point?
>>>Stroustrup:  Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I
>>>        thought of this little scheme, which would redress the
>>>        balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if
>>>        there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn,
>>>        that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with
>>>        programmers?  Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10,
>>>        you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics
>>>        system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.
>>>        They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really
>>>        ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and
>>>        pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows
>>>        code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain
>>>        your sanity.
>>>Interviewer:  You're kidding...?
>>>Stroustrup:  Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem.
>>>        Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer
>>>        could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember
>>>        what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?
>>>Interviewer:  You bet I do, that's what I used to do.
>>>Stroustrup:  OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from
>>>        Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two
>>>        together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew
>>>        about DOS to earn a decent living too.
>>>Interviewer:  I don't believe you said that...
>>>Stroustrup:  Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most
>>>        people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste
>>>        of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I
>>>        thought it would.
>>>Interviewer:  So how exactly did you do it?
>>>Stroustrup:  It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought
>>>        people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a
>>>        brain can see that object-oriented programming is
>>>        counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.
>>>Interviewer:  What?
>>>Stroustrup:  And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear
>>>        of a company re-using its code?
>>>Interviewer:  Well, never, actually, but...
>>>Stroustrup:  There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the
>>>        early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor
>>>        Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold
>>>        trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I
>>>        felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn
>>>        from their mistakes.
>>>Interviewer:  Obviously, they didn't?
>>>Stroustrup:  Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies
>>>        hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30
>>>        million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult.
>>>        Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end.
>>>Interviewer:  They did?  Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works.
>>>Stroustrup:  Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took
>>>        five minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of
>>>        RAM. Then it ran like treacle. Actually, I thought this
>>>        would be a major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out
>>>        within a week, but nobody cared. Sun and HP were only too
>>>        glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources
>>>        just to run trivial programs. You know, when we had our
>>>        first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and
>>>        couldn't believe the size of the executable. 2.1MB
>>>Interviewer:  What?  Well, compilers have come a long way, since then.
>>>Stroustrup:  They have?  Try it on the latest version of g++ - you
>>>        won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there
>>>        are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the
>>>        world. British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands
>>>        but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start
>>>        again. They were luckier than Australian Telecom. Now I
>>>        hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more
>>>        and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger, to
>>>        accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a joy?
>>>Interviewer:  Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language.
>>>Stroustrup:  You really believe that, don't you?  Have you ever sat
>>>        down and worked on a C++ project?  Here's what happens:
>>>        First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only
>>>        the most trivial projects will work first time. Take
>>>        operator overloading. At the end of the project, almost
>>>        every module has it, usually, because guys feel they really
>>>        should do it, as it was in their training course. The same
>>>        operator then means something totally different in every
>>>        module. Try pulling that lot together, when you have a
>>>        hundred or so modules. And as for data hiding. God, I
>>>        sometimes can't help laughing when I hear about the problems
>>>        companies have making their modules talk to each other. I
>>>        think the word 'synergistic' was specially invented to twist
>>>        the knife in a project manager's ribs.
>>>Interviewer:  I have to say, I'm beginning to be quite appalled at
>>>        all this. You say you did it to raise programmers'
>>>        salaries?  That's obscene.
>>>Stroustrup:  Not really. Everyone has a choice. I didn't expect
>>>        the thing to get so much out of hand. Anyway, I basically
>>>        succeeded. C++ is dying off now, but programmers still get
>>>        high salaries - especially those poor devils who have to
>>>        maintain all this crap. You do realise, it's impossible to
>>>        maintain a large C++ software module if you didn't actually
>>>        write it?
>>>Interviewer:  How come?
>>>Stroustrup:  You are out of touch, aren't you?  Remember the typedef?
>>>Interviewer:  Yes, of course.
>>>Stroustrup:  Remember how long it took to grope through the header
>>>        files only to find that 'RoofRaised' was a double precision
>>>        number?  Well, imagine how long it takes to find all the
>>>        implicit typedefs in all the Classes in a major project.
>>>Interviewer:  So how do you reckon you've succeeded?
>>>Stroustrup:  Remember the length of the average-sized 'C' project?
>>>        About 6 months. Not nearly long enough for a guy with a
>>>        wife and kids to earn enough to have a decent standard of
>>>        living. Take the same project, design it in C++ and what do
>>>        you get?  I'll tell you. One to two years. Isn't that
>>>        great?  All that job security, just through one mistake of
>>>        judgement. And another thing. The universities haven't
>>>        been teaching 'C' for such a long time, there's now a
>>>        shortage of decent 'C' programmers. Especially those who
>>>        know anything about Unix systems programming. How many guys
>>>        would know what to do with 'malloc', when they've used 'new'
>>>        all these years - and never bothered to check the return
>>>        code. In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return
>>>        codes. Whatever happened to good ol' '-1'?  At least you
>>>        knew you had an error, without bogging the thing down in all
>>>        that 'throw' 'catch' 'try' stuff.
>>>Interviewer:  But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time?
>>>Stroustrup:  Does it?  Have you ever noticed the difference between
>>>        a 'C' project plan, and a C++ project plan?  The planning
>>>        stage for a C++ project is three times as long. Precisely
>>>        to make sure that everything which should be inherited is,
>>>        and what shouldn't isn't. Then, they still get it wrong.
>>>        Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C' program?  Now finding
>>>        them is a major industry. Most companies give up, and send
>>>        the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to
>>>        avoid the expense of tracking them all down.
>>>Interviewer:  There are tools...
>>>Stroustrup:  Most of which were written in C++.
>>>Interviewer:  If we publish this, you'll probably get lynched, you
>>>        do realise that?
>>>Stroustrup:  I doubt it. As I said, C++ is way past its peak now,
>>>        and no company in its right mind would start a C++ project
>>>        without a pilot trial. That should convince them that it's
>>>        the road to disaster. If not, they deserve all they get. You
>>>        know, I tried to convince Dennis Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++.
>>>Interviewer:  Oh my God. What did he say?
>>>Stroustrup:  Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor. I think
>>>        both he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early
>>>        days, but never let on. He said he'd help me write a C++
>>>        version of DOS, if I was interested.
>>>Interviewer:  Were you?
>>>Stroustrup:  Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I'll give you a demo
>>>        when we're through. I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the
>>>        computer room. Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU's, and only
>>>        takes up 70 megs of disk.
>>>Interviewer:  What's it like on a PC?
>>>Stroustrup:  Now you're kidding. Haven't you ever seen Windows '95?
>>>        I think of that as my biggest success. Nearly blew the game
>>>        before I was ready, though.
>>>Interviewer:  You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me
>>>        thinking. Somewhere out there, there's a guy going to try it.
>>>Stroustrup:  Not after they read this interview.
>>>Interviewer:  I'm sorry, but I don't see us being able to publish
>>>        any of this.
>>>Stroustrup:  But it's the story of the century. I only want to be
>>>        remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I've done for
>>>        them. You know how much a C++ guy can get these days?
>>>Interviewer:  Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an
>>>        hour.
>>>Stroustrup:  See?  And I bet he earns it. Keeping track of all the
>>>        gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job. And, as I said
>>>        before, every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic
>>>        promise to use every damn element of the language on every
>>>        project. Actually, that really annoys me sometimes, even
>>>        though it serves my original purpose. I almost like the
>>>        language after all this time.
>>>Interviewer:  You mean you didn't before?
>>>Stroustrup:  Hated it. It even looks clumsy, don't you agree?  But
>>>        when the book royalties started to come in... well, you get
>>>        the picture.
>>>Interviewer:  Just a minute. What about references?  You must
>>>        admit, you improved on 'C' pointers.
>>>Stroustrup:  Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I
>>>        thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a
>>>        guy who'd written C++ from the beginning. He said he could
>>>        never remember whether his variables were referenced or
>>>        dereferenced, so he always used pointers. He said the
>>>        little asterisk always reminded him.
>>>Interviewer:  Well, at this point, I usually say 'thank you very
>>>        much' but it hardly seems adequate.
>>>Stroustrup:  Promise me you'll publish this. My conscience is
>>>        getting the better of me these days.
>>>Interviewer:  I'll let you know, but I think I know what my editor
>>>        will say.
>>>Stroustrup:  Who'd believe it anyway?  Although, can you send me a
>>>        copy of that tape?
>>>Interviewer:  I can do that.
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------