6 ms·

Took a class with him in college, perhaps one of the smartest people I've had the opportunity to meet. Nobody tells a story quite like Bjarne, and nothing beat

Took a class with him in college, perhaps one of the smartest people I've had the opportunity to meet. Nobody tells a story quite like Bjarne, and nothing beats the classes he would open with a story straight out of Bell Labs. Him and his brilliant TA, David (if you're reading this definitely send me a message!), were awesome in showing not just how C++ has been built over the years, but how a steadfast approach to building a culture focused on particular metrics was crucial to C++'s development (and to the development of any other project as well). Congratulations Bjarne; learned a lot about benchmarking from your class!

Waterluvian 9y ago
I love tech lore from the Bell Labs, PARC era. Wish I knew where to find them. Computerphile on YouTube has some.
- mhh__ 9y ago
  Bjarne himself has written/spoke about that era quite a lot, I can't direct you into anything specific but he usually weaves a lot of tidbits from the past into his talks.
- StevenOtto 9y ago
  The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by Mitchell Waldrop is a great book.
- arkx 9y ago
  "Dealers of Lightning" by Michael Hiltzik was an excellent book on Xerox PARC. I haven't yet read "The Idea Factory" by Jon Gertner, which covers Bell Labs.
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davidlee1435 9y ago
I remember how ridiculously long the waitlist was for that class, even for a course in the CS division. Really hoping he teaches it again next spring.
- krat0sprakhar 9y ago
  Haha! Don't let that deter you from attending the lectures! I unfortunately didn't get past the waitlist but was still able to attend the lectures and learn a lot. It was an absolute delight to learn from Prof Stroustrup!
  - urs2102 9y ago
    Good to see you here (again) Prakhar! Didn't know you audited Prof. Stroustrup's class. If I can recommend a project for the HN community to check out, it's krat0sprakhar's JSJS project. One of the prettiest projects I've seen in my time at college as well [0]. [0]: https://prakhar.me/projects/ https://prakhar.me/projects/
  - koolba 9y ago
    You deliberately caused a potential buffer overflow?
    - sun_n_surf 9y ago
      Ba dum tiss
      - DonHopkins 9y ago
        Bjarne is a defensive lecturer so he always allocates a few extra safety seats.
senex 9y ago
This is really interesting. What kind of metrics is the culture focused on? How were they established. Can you think of examples when critical/deliberate decisions were made to pursue the integrity of the culture (rather than shifting or broadening focus)? Has cultural orientation or measurements changed over time? How and why? Are there other examples of cultures focused on particular metrics that have flourished? Or faded away? Super curious...
- urs2102 9y ago
  So there are a number of examples, but Bjarne used to stress 'compatibility' for example. It was a really important idea for him, that despite the really clean and smaller language that he could have developed, it was very important for him to have tighter compatibility with C. In many ways, he discussed how he hasn't built a 'perfect language', and that as languages operate as tools, it's very important to be focused and decide what matters over what doesn't. Sure you could have a prettier language, but as programmers there is a cost to everything and sometimes we are so eager to see the benefits in any new tool, it's easy to forget to measure the costs (he also really, really enjoyed having us benchmark things to see the cost in using x method over y method). Making it explicitly clear what you intend to focus on, and setting a standard for not just yourself, but your community encourages the language to grow in a way that it remains useful and sustainable. He mentioned that if he built out this tighter/cleaner language, it's also possible that the language would have failed to generate any traction at all. I'm not entirely sure of cultures that have flourished or faded particular ideas, but if you look at how despite newer languages are constantly taking old ideas from Lisp, how come Lisp didn't take off (and I say this as a true fan of Lisp)? Again, I'm totally hypothesizing, but it may have to do with compatibility. You can say that Lisp's syntax (or lack thereof) is really important to not just how macros are developed, but for Lisp programmers to have a language that evolves. Yet at the same time, Lisp's greatest strength is often its biggest weakness. You can't really standardize something that evolves all the time, and as such, can't really have compatability. How do I build a library for a language that despite becoming more powerful for the particular purpose I started using it for, looks nothing like anything else out there? I think his main point tended to be, pick things that matter to you: metrics that matter to you, ideas that matter to you, a mission that matters to you and just really work on that. It's easy to get distracted and just add features "just because", but make sure they conform to the metrics you set forth for yourself.
DonHopkins 9y ago
I forgave him for all his sins when he proved how well he could make fun of himself: http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
- kiddico 9y ago
  I got a good laugh out of that, thanks. I hope that you can't actually overload whitespace... I need to go try this. edit: you cannot, I am equally disappointed and relieved.

Waterluvian 9y ago

I love tech lore from the Bell Labs, PARC era. Wish I knew where to find them. Computerphile on YouTube has some.

mhh__ 9y ago
Bjarne himself has written/spoke about that era quite a lot, I can't direct you into anything specific but he usually weaves a lot of tidbits from the past into his talks.
StevenOtto 9y ago
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by Mitchell Waldrop is a great book.
arkx 9y ago
"Dealers of Lightning" by Michael Hiltzik was an excellent book on Xerox PARC. I haven't yet read "The Idea Factory" by Jon Gertner, which covers Bell Labs.

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davidlee1435 9y ago

I remember how ridiculously long the waitlist was for that class, even for a course in the CS division. Really hoping he teaches it again next spring.

krat0sprakhar 9y ago
Haha! Don't let that deter you from attending the lectures! I unfortunately didn't get past the waitlist but was still able to attend the lectures and learn a lot. It was an absolute delight to learn from Prof Stroustrup!
- urs2102 9y ago
  Good to see you here (again) Prakhar! Didn't know you audited Prof. Stroustrup's class. If I can recommend a project for the HN community to check out, it's krat0sprakhar's JSJS project. One of the prettiest projects I've seen in my time at college as well [0]. [0]: https://prakhar.me/projects/ https://prakhar.me/projects/
- koolba 9y ago
  You deliberately caused a potential buffer overflow?
  - sun_n_surf 9y ago
    Ba dum tiss
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      Bjarne is a defensive lecturer so he always allocates a few extra safety seats.

senex 9y ago

This is really interesting. What kind of metrics is the culture focused on? How were they established. Can you think of examples when critical/deliberate decisions were made to pursue the integrity of the culture (rather than shifting or broadening focus)? Has cultural orientation or measurements changed over time? How and why? Are there other examples of cultures focused on particular metrics that have flourished? Or faded away? Super curious...

urs2102 9y ago
So there are a number of examples, but Bjarne used to stress 'compatibility' for example. It was a really important idea for him, that despite the really clean and smaller language that he could have developed, it was very important for him to have tighter compatibility with C. In many ways, he discussed how he hasn't built a 'perfect language', and that as languages operate as tools, it's very important to be focused and decide what matters over what doesn't. Sure you could have a prettier language, but as programmers there is a cost to everything and sometimes we are so eager to see the benefits in any new tool, it's easy to forget to measure the costs (he also really, really enjoyed having us benchmark things to see the cost in using x method over y method). Making it explicitly clear what you intend to focus on, and setting a standard for not just yourself, but your community encourages the language to grow in a way that it remains useful and sustainable. He mentioned that if he built out this tighter/cleaner language, it's also possible that the language would have failed to generate any traction at all. I'm not entirely sure of cultures that have flourished or faded particular ideas, but if you look at how despite newer languages are constantly taking old ideas from Lisp, how come Lisp didn't take off (and I say this as a true fan of Lisp)? Again, I'm totally hypothesizing, but it may have to do with compatibility. You can say that Lisp's syntax (or lack thereof) is really important to not just how macros are developed, but for Lisp programmers to have a language that evolves. Yet at the same time, Lisp's greatest strength is often its biggest weakness. You can't really standardize something that evolves all the time, and as such, can't really have compatability. How do I build a library for a language that despite becoming more powerful for the particular purpose I started using it for, looks nothing like anything else out there? I think his main point tended to be, pick things that matter to you: metrics that matter to you, ideas that matter to you, a mission that matters to you and just really work on that. It's easy to get distracted and just add features "just because", but make sure they conform to the metrics you set forth for yourself.

DonHopkins 9y ago

I forgave him for all his sins when he proved how well he could make fun of himself: http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf

kiddico 9y ago
I got a good laugh out of that, thanks. I hope that you can't actually overload whitespace... I need to go try this. edit: you cannot, I am equally disappointed and relieved.