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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

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:01PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:01PM (#617992)

    C++ won because it was the path of least resistance.

    It built on the massive installed base of C programmers and programs, the dominant language of the time. You could migrate your codebase from C to C++ at your own pace.
    It stays with us because the majority of today's high level language programmers work on much higher level languages now, so there isn't much pressure to create a better replacement for a high-performance, high-ish level language like C++. It's a small niche.

    I must say C++ is by far the most complicated programming language I have ever seen. I have no desire to use it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @02:14AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @02:14AM (#618165)

    But there are many possible ways to add compatible features to C to make this migration path.

    Any of these could have been a path of least resistance.

    Why did C++ win?

    And is there still room for another path from C separate from C++?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:48PM (#618413)

      Well, a MAJOR factor in C++ being chosen over its competitors is that it was FREE.
      Free is common now, but it wasn't then.