“Nobody knows what most C++ programmers do.” — Bjarne Stroustrup
The quote above came up in a discussion of C++ by Scott Meyers, Andrei Alexandrescu, and Herb Sutter. They argue that C++ is used in so many diverse applications that if someone starts a sentence with “Most C++ programmers …” he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Related post:
The dark matter of programmers
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Derek Jones 08.31.11 at 18:01
The underlying problem is that C++ is so incredibly difficult to parse that researchers who analyse large code bases work with either C or Java.
Eric Hamilton 08.31.11 at 19:49
How about changing “C++” to “C”, does anything change?
John 08.31.11 at 19:58
Eric: The speakers mentioned C along with C++ in their discussion. Both are used all over the place: embedded devices, games, operating systems, scientific computing, …
They didn’t say this, but I imagine it would be easier, for example, to say what most VB developers do. Or PHP. If you’re writing PHP, there’s a very good chance you’re making web pages.
Dr. Bubba 08.31.11 at 22:27
John,
A coworker and I were at that conference. That comment brought some chuckles. It was a good conference in a great location. Learned a lot.
DB
Ibrahim M. Ghazal 08.31.11 at 23:05
I think the only accurate sentence that starts like that is “Most C++ programmers only use a subset of C++”.
Ben West 09.01.11 at 10:01
Lets hope most PHP programmers are writing web pages….
Andrei Alexandrescu 09.01.11 at 10:22
“Most C++ programmers don’t know what most C++ programmers do.”
Sixing Huang 09.04.11 at 12:28
Most C++ programmers write main() function ? : )
Cat Typist 09.06.11 at 17:39
@Sixing Huang
Those of us doing Windows development often write some other entry point function such as WinMain() or DllMain() instead of main(). You see how unreliable most C++ programmers are, when it comes to doing what someone thinks most of us are doing.
lucas 09.10.11 at 16:35
Most C++ programmers know they can do it better than the programmer before them.