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Stroustrup on programming languages in evolution

Posted by: Jack Vaughan on May 02, 2008 DIGG

Certainly one of the chief rockstar programmers of all time is Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++. MSDN recently interviewed Bjarne; the topic was language, and it made for a good read.

Would it surprise you if Bjarne said he dislikes IDEs? Probably not. Take it, Bjarne:

"I want to be able to understand my system from just the source code in the source files. I actively dislike IDE mechanisms that involve transformations or generation that cannot be represented as code fit for human consumption."

No, no surpirses in the interview, but plenty of good stuff. What makes him worry?

I worry about the number of languages being designed, implemented, introduced with great fanfare, and then fading away without significant impact.

A DSL should be a last resort, not a first, he states.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc500572.aspx

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