Parody of an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++

http://odgaard.org/jeod/funny/interview.html

by gcv • 17 years ago

26 21 17 years ago

odgaard.org

bdfh42• 17 years ago

Parody, What Parody?

Most of us have held this to be a true confession

tptacek• 17 years ago

Please make this thing stop; this is the Hacker News equivalent of those joke faxes that offices used to circulate in the '90s.

point3• 17 years ago

If you cannot learn C++, you are either plain old stupid or you don't belong in programming. C++ is very easy, the syntax is picked up in a week, and you can work without any libraries, you mostly just need to learn the API of the host system. If you can program in Ruby, you are capable enough to program in C++, and the only thing stopping you is just this 'myth' that C++ is hard.

lliiffee2• 17 years ago

Most C++ haters (e.g. me) can program in C++ and probably even do program in it sometimes, but just don't like to. I can certainly do anything in C++ I could do in any other language, just with a hell of a lot more cursing and kicking things.

kingkongrevenge2• 17 years ago

C++ has many flaws. Let's have a C++ bashing party, hooray. However, a discussion of the merits of C++ boils down to C++ vs C as far as getting things done in the real world and in the domains where C++ and C are applicable. C is absolutely horrible. I cannot imagine why anyone would start a new program or module to a higher level language in C rather than C++. It's like choosing BASIC over a modern scripting language.

point3• 17 years ago

This does not mean that C++ is difficult. It just means that you may be used to easier languages, and your brain is not flexible enough to deal with C++.

andreyf• 17 years ago

C++ is very easy, the syntax is picked up in a week, and you can work without any libraries, you mostly just need to learn the API of the host system.

You don't know C++.

point3• 17 years ago

What's the hard part of the syntax compared to a language like ruby? Interfaces? Classes? Inheritance? Templates? Exceptions? Ruby has equivalent interface elements, and there is not much of a difference in difficulty level between learning the one or the other.

I learnt C++ in 2 weeks 7 years ago, and it was easy. The difficulty comes with learning to use the libraries and host APIs, but that is exactly the same for every other language I've learnt since then.

TooMuchNick2• 17 years ago

In college, where I majored in English, I thought I'd have an adventure and take a class in programming. They taught us C++. I never tried programming again.

Say I was foolish enough to try again on my own. Say I wanted to write my own version of Writeroom: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

What language would I want to learn, and is there a good beginner's guide?

kragen• 17 years ago

You can learn a part of C++ in a week or two weeks, but really internalizing all the subtle gotchas takes longer. Static initialization order fiasco? Exception-safety without needing catch (...) { ... throw; } clauses? Why X-is-a-Y implies pointer-to-X-is-a-pointer-t-Y but not pointer-to-pointer-to-X-is-a-pointer-to-pointer-to-Y? Why do I get a long pause when I exit this scope where I destroy just one object? How do I debug a segfault? How do I debug multithreaded deadlock? When should I use a virtual base class? Etc.

You can't learn all that stuff in a week or two. And maybe you shouldn't learn it at all; for many applications there are things that will work better than C++ without so much complexity, whether that's C or Java or Python.

kailashbadu• 17 years ago

For a moment I actually found myself believing the interview. I could relate and identify with.

Parody of an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++

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