And no, I'm not a walking C++ dictionary. I do not keep every technical detail in my head at all times. If I did
that, I would be a much poorer programmer. I do keep the main points straight in my head most of the time, and I do
know where to find the details when I need them.
— Bjarne Stroustrup
Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide
all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.
— Bjarne Stroustrup
Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.
— Bjarne Stroustrup
There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the implementation.
— Bertrand Meyer
Actually I made up the term "object-oriented"", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
— Alan Kay
[On finding a large firework called "Python"] Showing a remarkable similarity to the programming
language bearing the same name, the Python firework was easy to light and produced spectacular results.
"Does Perl have a firework? NOOOOOOOO!" I said.
If Perl had a firework, it would probably have 4 different fuses, 2 electric starters, a solar mirror so
you could light it without matches, and three different kinds of flint. I'd probably still be trying to figure it
out.
A C firework would produce a louder, faster explosion and blow off my foot. C++'s firework would be even
more spectacular, taking off my leg and killing some of the children around me.
— Joey deVilla
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow away your whole
leg!
— Bjarne Stroustrup
19.26: How do you pronounce "char"? Like the first word of "char *". The accent is generally on the first
syllable.
— Infrequently Asked Questions in comp.lang.c
I saw `cout' being shifted "Hello world" times to the left and stopped right there.
— Steve Gonedes
...it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust _anybody_, and in CLOS you basically trust everybody. the
practical result is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS.
— Erik Naggum, quoted by Edward
O'Connor
(Of course SML does have its weaknesses, but by comparison, a discussion of C++'s strengths and flaws always sounds
like an argument about whether one should face north or east when one is sacrificing one's goat to the rain
god.)
— Thant Tessman
Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express
complex problems in C, so you don't.
— Erik Naggum (comp.lang.lisp)
Or here's an even simpler indicator of how much C++ sucks: Print out the C++ Public Review Document. Have someone
hold it about three feet above your head and then drop it. Thus you will be enlightened.
— Thant Tessman
/* I'd just like to take this moment to point out that C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a
string. */
— Jamie Zawinski (from the xkeycaps source)
This makes it possible to pass complex object hierarchies to a C coder who thinks computer science has made no
worthwhile advancements since the invention of the pointer.
— Gordon McMillan
That's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and
C++ is fast. (This rumor has, however, gotten a little out of hand. :)
— Erik Naggum (comp.lang.lisp)
...so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write
random values without having a clue where they point, has _not_ been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really
is.
— Erik Naggum (comp.lang.lisp)
C is not clean -- the language has _many_ gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are _simple_ in some sense,
it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.
— Erik Naggum (comp.lang.lisp)
Why are we talking about bricks and concrete in a lisp newsgroup? After long experiment it was found preferable to
talking about why Lisp is slower than C++...
— Duane Rettig and Tim Bradshaw (comp.lang.lisp)
That being done, all you have to do next is call free() slightly less often than malloc(). You may want to examine
the Solaris system libraries for a particularly ambitious implementation of this technique.
— Eric O'Dell (comp.lang.dylan)
C++ is a siren song. It *looks* like a HLL [High Level Language] in which you ought to be able to write an
application, but it really isn't.
— Alain Picard (comp.lang.lisp)
This is not to say C++ = bad, Lisp = good. It's to say C++ = bad irrespective of everything else.
— Alain Picard (comp.lang.lisp)
The problem with using C++ ... is that there's already a strong tendency in the language to require you to know
everything before you can do anything.
— Larry Wall
More good code has been written in languages denounced as "bad" than in languages proclaimed "wonderful" -- much
more.
— Bjarne Stroustrup