Programming Techniques, Tools and Languages

Tech Icons: Bjarne Stroustrup

2011-05-23T18:04:00.004-05:00

Meet Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++, and Hero of the Digital Revolution is the title of a March 2011 video released by Tech Icons, an AT&T Tech Channel show. Tech Icons focuses on the Heroes of the Digital Revolution in a series of fascinating biographies. The focal point of this video is Dr. Stroustrup, his creation of C++ and it's worldwide and interplanetary applications.

This audiovisual program highlights Dr. Stroustrup's journey from AT&T Bell Labs to Texas A&M University, emphasizing the history of C++ design and it's revolutionary affect on today's technology. C++0x* is also referenced as Dr. Stroustrup continues to improve C++ for future technologies. He says in the video, "C++...is my vehicle to get to interesting places and see interesting people." We are privileged that he has chosen Texas A&M as an interesting place on his incredible journey.

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is the Distinguished Professor and College of Engineering Endowed Chair in Computer Science in Texas A&M Engineering's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Written by Kathy Flores

An Automatic Parallelization Framework for Algebraic Computation Systems

2011-03-30T15:54:00.003-05:00

A paper "An Automatic Parallelization Framework for Algebraic Computation Systems" by Yue Li and Gabriel Dos Reis was accepted by ISSAC 2011

Abstract:
This paper proposes an automatic parallelization framework for an existing computer algebra system. The framework performs a semantics-based static analysis to extract reductions in library components. Reductions using associative binary operators are automatically transformed to their parallel versions. Our implementation is evaluated using algebraic library functions and a self-implemented application. Experimental results show that up to 5 times speed-up for the application is obtained. It is feasible to adapt the core of this framework to other algebraic computation systems and programming languages. The adaptation requires a type system which is able to provide semantics algebraic information from users.

Extending Type Systems in a Library

2010-11-23T14:08:00.001-06:00

Type-safe XML processing in C++
by Yuriy Solodkyy and Jaakko Järvi

Abstract

Type systems built directly into the compiler or interpreter of a programming language cannot be easily extended to keep track of run-time invariants of new abstractions. Yet, programming with domain-specific abstractions could benefit from additional static checking. This paper presents library techniques for extending the type system of C++ to support domain-specific abstractions. The main contribution is a programmable “subtype” relation. As a demonstration of the techniques, we implement a type system for defining type qualifiers in C++, as well as a type system for the XML processing language, capable of, e.g., statically guaranteeing that a program only produces valid XML documents according to a given XML schema.

Research highlights

Metaprogramming capabilities of C++ enable domain-specific type system extensions.
A template library for building new type system extensions.
Type system extensions for type qualifiers.
Type system extensions for regular expression types for typing XML.

Keywords: Type systems; XML; Type qualifiers; C++; Template metaprogramming; Active libraries

Published in: Science of Computer Programming
Project's Webpage: XTL

25th Anniversary of C++

2010-10-13T15:35:00.000-05:00

This Thursday will mark the 25th anniversary of the commercial release of the programming language C++, which was designed and implemented by our very own Distinguished Professor and College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup. C++ is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. The first commercial release of the language and the publication of the first edition of the book entitled "The C++ Programming Language" happened on October 14, 1985.

Literature Search for Computer Science

2010-09-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

Interesting talk by Todd Veldhuizen that was presented by Dr. Jaakko Jarvi during our PTTL Reading Group gathering last Friday.

Literature Search for Computer Science

by Todd Veldhuizen

Abstract

Why read the literature?

Because sometimes "a year of hard work can save a week of reading".
Increase the likelihood that someone will care about your research:
- Not duplicate an already known result.
- Identify communities of people who will appreciate what you are doing.
Be able to give a convincing treatment of your research problem:
- Using standard terminology and notations;
- Comparing your contribution to related work;
- Avoiding obvious ‘newbie ’ mistakes
- Not getting crushed by some crusty professor who claims to have published your result twenty years ago.

Dr. Stroustrup named Distinguished Professor

2010-04-30T20:22:00.003-05:00

by Tony Okonski

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup has earned promotion to the academic rank of Distinguished Professor in recognition of his contributions to computer science and software development at Texas A&M University. The promotion will take effect on September 1, 2010.

Dr. Stroustrup's research interests include distributed systems, simulation, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages. Stroustrup is the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University.

He is the author of three editions of the definitive book on C++, The C++ Programming Language, The Design and Evolution of C++ (1994), The Annotated C++ Reference Manual (1989), and a textbook for freshmen and beginning programmers, Programming Principles and Practice Using C++ (2009). These books have been translated in numerous languages.

C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages. It is used for everyday applications such as internet browsers and cell phones as well as scientific applications, such as NASA's Mars Rovers and the human genome project. Its key strength is in infrastructure applications, such as wind turbine control, micro-electronics industrial tools, and Google.

Stroustrup is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow, an AT&T Fellow, and an ACM Fellow. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO standardization of C++.

In 1993 he received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper award "for his early work laying the foundations for the C++ programming language. Based on those foundations and Dr. Stroustrup's continuing efforts, C++ has become one of the most influential programming languages in the history of computing." In 2008, Stroustrup received the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming award for "advancing the craft of computer programming."

Stroustrup is also a recipient of the 2009 Association of Former Students at Texas A&M University Distinguished Achievement Award in the Category of Research at both the College of Engineering and University levels. His elevation to Distinguished Professor is a very noteworthy achievement as it signifies the excellence and quality of Dr. Stroustrup's teaching and research in programming languages.

What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why?

2010-01-28T16:55:00.002-06:00

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup, Professor and College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University, recently wrote an article for Communications of the ACM where he speaks about the fundamental changes to computer science education that are required to better address the needs of industry. The article in its entirety can be found here.

Bjarne Stroustrup Expounds on Concepts and the Future of C++

2009-08-06T17:20:00.003-05:00

In his recent article on DevX, Danny Kalev asks Bjarne the hard questions about concepts and C++'s future.

A year ago, everyone was all but certain that the C++0x standard was just around the corner, and that it would include concepts (see Danny Kalev's earlier interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, from August 2008). However, In July 2009 the C++ standards committee decided to remove concepts from the C++0x by an unprecedented move. Danny's recent controversial editorial was among the first to report that decision and its possible consequences. Despite vociferous disagreements over the removal of concepts themselves, nearly everyone agrees that the committee's decision left open many questions not only about concepts, but also about the committee's charter, and even the future of C++ itself.

Therefore, Danny has interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup again, this time to capture his thoughts about concepts, their removal, and the impact of that decision, along with his take on other pressing questions that currently concern the entire C++ community.

Source: DevX: Bjarne Stroustrup Expounds on Concepts and the Future of C++

Book Signing and Reception for Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup

2009-02-16T18:02:00.003-06:00

by Tony Okonski

Please join us for a book signing and reception honoring Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup on the release of his new book, Programming Principles and Practice Using C++. The reception will be held from 3-5pm on Friday, February 20, 2009 at the J. Wayne Stark Galleries on the campus of Texas A&M University.

Programming Principles and Practice Using C++ was written for those who have never programmed, and it has been tested with more than 1,000 first-year students at Texas A&M University. It is the current textbook for the ENGR 112, Foundations of Engineering 2, and CPSC 113 Intermediate Programming and Design courses; however, practitioners and advanced students will gain new insight and guidance by seeing how a recognized master approaches the elements of his art.

This book was written primarily to teach the fundamentals, concepts, and techniques of programming in greater depth as compared to traditional introductions. This approach creates a solid foundation for writing useful, correct, maintainable, and efficient code. The book also serves as a general introduction to programming, covering both object-oriented programming and generic programming. It is a solid introduction to the C++ programming language, one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. The book presents modern C++ programming techniques from the start, introducing the C++ standard library to simplify programming tasks.

The book covers a wide range of essential concepts, from design and programming techniques, language features, and libraries, including input, output, computation, and simple graphics, to more specialized topics, such as text processing and testing, and provides abundant reference material. Source code and support supplements are available from the author's website. Some comments from readers:

"A remarkable balance of accessibility and accuracy."

"Up until now, I looked in vain for one that combines a good explanation of programming principles with a good explanation of C++."

"The sheer joy that shines throughout the pages. It's clear that Bjarne Stroustrup is still jazzed about programming after all this time."

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author of The C++ Programming Language. He is the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science and Professor at Texas A&M University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and an AT&T Fellow. He is a founding member of the ISO C++ standards committee.

Source: Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University

Bjarne Stroustrup on Educating Software Developers

2008-12-15T14:37:00.002-06:00

In this interview Dr. Stroustrup speaks about the challenges and problems – and improvements being made – in computer science programs. Among issues like perceptions of offshoring and the need to balance the theoretical with the practical, he addresses complaints by tech companies about the lack of fully qualified CS graduates.

Source: Datamation

The A-Z of Programming Languages: C++

2008-06-25T16:58:00.000-05:00

by Naomi Hamilton

Bjarne Stroustrup, the creative force behind one of the most widely used and successful programming languages — C++ — is featured in an in-depth 8-page interview where he reveals everything programmers and software engineers should know about C++; its history, what it was intended to do, where it is at now, and of course what all good code-writers should think about when using the language he created.

Bjarne Stroustrup on the Evolution of Languages

2008-04-15T16:46:00.002-05:00

by Howard Dierking

Every once in a while, an evolutionary leap rapidly advances and reshapes the entire field of engineering. Such a leap occurred in software development with the introduction of the C++ programming language. This leap was not inherent in the language itself: object-oriented languages such as Simula67 and Smalltalk existed prior to C++. But because C++ was built on top of the C programming language (and could compile existing C programs), it was able to bring the abstractions of object-oriented thinking into the mainstream.
C++ has inspired a great deal of thought surrounding software design and development, from design patterns to meta-programming. And because of its portability among hardware platforms and its lower-level expressiveness, C++ will assuredly be essential in a world of faster, smaller hardware.
I recently had the pleasure of talking to Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, about a host of topics, from his thoughts on languages to general industry trends to his own personal reading list. Many of the questions asked were suggested by readers via my blog, so thanks to everyone who contributed questions. And of course, thanks to Bjarne. Continue to the interview ...

An Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup

2008-03-31T14:26:00.003-05:00

by James Buchanan

C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup discusses the evolving C++0x standard, the education of programmers, and the future of programming.

http://www.ddj.com/cpp/207000124

Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award

2008-03-27T18:30:00.001-05:00

Santa Clara, Calif. - Best-selling author Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++ and author of the Addison-Wesley title The C++ Programming Language, has received the Dr. Dobb's Journal Excellence in Programming Award.

The Dr. Dobb's Journal Excellence in Programming Award is annually bestowed on individuals who, in the spirit of innovation and cooperation, have made significant contributions to the advancement of software development. Stroustrup's award acknowledges significant achievements in object-oriented programming, software architecture and modeling.

"I'm especially pleased to receive this award because it reflects the views of real-world software developers and shows that with persistence and a bit of luck an individual can still make a difference", Stroustrup said. This award has been bestowed on few of the industry elite, including Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the LINUX operating system, Guido van Rossum, the Python programming language creator, and Larry Wall, author of the Perl programming language.

In addition to the The C++ Programming Language, now in its third edition, Stroustrup is the author of The Design and Evolution of C++, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual, and the forthcoming Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, to be published in August.

Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++ and the author of The C++ Programming Language and The Design and Evolution of C++ from Addison-Wesley. His research interests include distributed systems, simulation, design, programming techniques, software development tools and programming languages. Stroustrup is the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University and an AT&T Fellow. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO standardization of C++.

This article was written by Andrea Bledsoe for Engineering Weekly; with contributions by Tony Okonski

C++ Chronicles

2007-12-07T14:04:00.001-06:00

Nostalgic recollections of some early days of C++ :-)

Open Multi-Methods for C++

2007-09-21T15:00:00.001-05:00

We've recently got our paper on multi-methods accepted to GPCE'07 and Peter will do a dry run of the presentation on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 16:00 in HRBB 302. Please stop by and give us your feedback. Thanks!

Abstract

Multiple dispatch -- the selection of a function to be invoked based on the
dynamic type of two or more arguments -- is a solution to several classical
problems in object-oriented programming. Open multi-methods generalize multiple dispatch towards open-class extensions, which improve separation of concerns and provisions for retroactive design. We present the rationale, design, implementation, and performance of a language feature, called open multi-methods, for C++. Our open multi-methods support both repeated and virtual inheritance. Our call resolution rules generalize both virtual function dispatch and overload resolution semantics. After using all information from argument types, these rules can resolve further ambiguities by using covariant return types. Great care was taken to integrate open multi-methods with existing C++ language features and rules. We describe a model
implementation and compare its performance and space requirements to existing open multi-method extensions and workaround techniques for C++. Compared to these techniques, our approach is simpler to use, catches more user mistakes, and resolves more ambiguities through link-time analysis, runs significantly faster, and requires less memory.

In particular, the runtime cost of calling an open multimethod is constant and
less than the cost of a double dispatch (two virtual function calls). Finally,
we provide a sketch of a design for open multi-methods in the presence of
dynamic loading and linking of libraries.

Technical report on this work can be found here

More information about Peter Pirkelbauer can be found on his webpage.

The Future of C++

2007-09-12T15:41:00.000-05:00

by Bjarne Stroustrup

In a rare public talk, C++ creator Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup discusses his ideal in programming languages, as well how he sees the next version (and beyond) of C++ developing. He explains the general selection criteria used for adding new features, some of the legacy of C++, and many other interesting topics. Especially interesting is during the Q&A he explains his views of the embrace and extend mentality some implementations, such as VC++, have taken.

Get the Flash Player to see this video using Flash Player.

Source: University of Waterloo

C++0x: An overview

2007-07-31T23:00:00.000-05:00

by Bjarne Stroustrup

A good programming language is far more than a simple collection of features. My ideal is to provide a set of facilities that smoothly work together to support design and programming styles of a generality beyond my imagination. Here, I briefly outline rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being applied in the design of C++0x. Then, I present the state of the standards process (we are aiming for C++09) and give examples of a few of the proposals such as concepts, generalized initialization, being considered in the ISO C++ standards committee. Since there are far more proposals than could be presented in an hour, I'll take questions.

Source: Google Speaker Series

Concepts: Extending C++ Templates For Generic Programming

2007-02-21T23:30:00.000-06:00

by Doug Gregor

Concepts are a major addition to C++0x that make templates more robust, more powerful, ... all » and easier to write and use. At their most basic level, concepts provide a type system for templates. Using concepts, the C++ compiler is able to detect errors in the definition and use of templates before they are instantiated. One immediately obvious benefit of this separate type-checking capability is a dramatic improvement in error messages resulting from improper use of templates. Look a little deeper and we find that concepts support an entirely new programming paradigm, Generic Programming, enabling the construction of a new breed of generic libraries that provide better extensibility, composability, and usability than what is possible with today's C++.

This talk will provide an overview of the new features introduced by concepts and how they will benefit C++ programmers. We will see how concepts can be used to express the core components of the C++ Standard (Template) Library, and explore some of the new capabilities that concepts bring to the C++ language.

Source: Google Tech Talks

C++0x Initialization Lists

2007-02-21T23:00:00.000-06:00

by Bjarne Stroustrup

Getting initialization right is an important part of programming. Over the years, this ... all » has led to a mess of language facilities and techniques. This talk describes how C++0x (most likely) will address two issues: how to get a uniform syntax and semantics for all initialization and how to allow initialization by general lists. Obviously, people will want the solution to be really simple and completely compatible. As ever, the resolution is to be almost completely compatible and almost simple. This talk will describe sequence constructors, homogeneous and heterogeneous initializer lists, and (as far as time allows) fit generalized constant expressions, prevention of narrowing conversions, and variadic templates into this picture.

Source: Google Tech Talks

Concur and C++ Futures

2006-09-13T18:00:00.000-05:00

by Herb Sutter

Discussions of concurrency & C++ futures September 2006 meeting of the Northwest C++ Users Group

Source: Northwest C++ Users Group