Bjarne Stroustrup


Bjarne Stroustrup is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the creation and development of the C++ programming language. He is a visiting professor at Columbia University, and works at Morgan Stanley as a Managing Director in New York.

Early life and education

Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His family was working class, and he went to the local schools.
He attended Aarhus University 1969–1975 and graduated with a master's degree in mathematics and computer science. His interests focused on microprogramming and machine architecture. He learned the fundamentals of object-oriented programming from its inventor, Kristen Nygaard, who frequently visited Aarhus.
In 1979, he received a PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge, where he was supervised by David Wheeler. His thesis concerned communication in distributed computer systems.

Career

In 1979, Stroustrup began his career as a member of technical staff in the Computer Science Research Center of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA. There, he began his work on C++ and programming techniques. Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. In 1993, he was made a Bell Lab's fellow and in 1996, an AT&T Fellow.
From 2002 to 2014, Stroustrup was the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science Professor at Texas A&M University. From 2011, he was made a University Distinguished Professor.
As of January 2014, Stroustrup is a Technical Fellow and Managing Director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a Visiting Professor in Computer Science at Columbia University.

C++

Stroustrup is best known for his work on C++. In 1979, he began developing C++. In his own words, he "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee." C++ was made generally available in 1985. For non-commercial use, the source code of the compiler and the foundation libraries was the cost of shipping ; this was before everyone had Internet access. Stroustrup also published a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programming Language.
The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are:
Stroustrup documented his principles guiding the design of C++ and the evolution of the language in his 1994 book ”The Design and Evolution of C++” and two papers for ACM's History of Programming Languages conferences.
Stroustrup was a founding member of the C++ standards committee and has remained an active member ever since. For 24 years he chaired the subgroup chartered to handle proposals for language extensions.

Awards and honors

Selected honors
Fellowships
Honorary doctorates and professorships
Stroustrup has written or co-written a number of publications, including the books
In all, these books have been translated into 21 languages
More than 100 popular and academic articles including
More than a hundred technical reports for the C++ standards committee