Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Bjarne Stroustrup to Receive the 2018 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering

posted by martyb on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the C++ dept.

canopic jug writes:

The US National Academy of Engineering has announced that Bjarne Stroustrup will receive the 2018 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering for his creation of C++ while at Bell Labs. The language C++, to put it mildly, is widely used. The prize will be formally awarded on February 20th in Washington, DC.

Here is Bjarne's home page and his Wikipedia page.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Bjarne Stroustrup to Receive the 2018 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 39 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:47PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:47PM (#617984)

    I did check out the Boost library smart pointers as an example.
    The library is very useful, but pretty much unreadable.
    (Can you say templates?)

    There lies the story with C++.
    it is a powerful tool you can use it to make wonderful things,
    but like another powerful tool, gasoline, it can also be used to make a mess.

    I guess it was an interesting, wandering path to make a new language that followed C and was able to get folks to use it.
    Compromises were necessary along the way.
    There is no question that the world is better off with it, even with the warts.

    Perhaps the award is for sheparding the strange wandering path.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday January 05 2018, @02:07AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 05 2018, @02:07AM (#618162) Journal

    There lies the story with C++.
    it is a powerful tool you can use it to make wonderful things,
    but like another powerful tool, gasoline, it can also be used to make a mess.

    As anything useful and versatile in this world.

    If you look at computing world only, some quick picks:

    A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

    To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

    Note how C++ has no bearing in messing up, you can cause damage in any programming language.
    That is to say: there ain't no such thing as a "fool-proof programming language"

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @02:22AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @02:22AM (#618167)

      'Note how C++ has no bearing in messing up'

      I have usually found the syntax for templates to make things which are incomprehensible.
      At best write only, and in some instances even worse.

      Bjarne says as much in his description of how to use them.
      He says to first debug a type specific thing, then translate it to a template.

      This seems in conflict with C++ having no bearing on messing up?

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 05 2018, @03:09AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 05 2018, @03:09AM (#618184) Journal

        I have usually found the syntax for templates to make things which are incomprehensible.

        Same with pure maths - template, especially template metaprogramming, is very close to how a mathematician mind works (given some properties and behaviour, then heaps of theorems hold true, it doesn't matter if the objects are matrices or sets of prime numbers or families of functions)

        And yet, even if you don;t get it, you can't - in good faith - blame maths even if/when their applications may have had a contribution [blogspot.com.au] to a decade long crisis [wired.com] (google for causes of 2008 crisis PhD Gaussian copula David Li [google.com], usually in times closer to 2008 - the linked search is set to 2008-2014)

        This seems in conflict with C++ having no bearing on messing up?

        Since you haven't showed that C++ is necessary to cause a mess, how can you claim it has a bearing in all that's wrong with computers?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford