Subject: FW: IJMC - The International Junk Mail Clearinhouse Returns (fwd)
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                IJMC - Object Oriented Programming?

If you've ever done any programming in your life, you're probably going 
to love this one. True or not. This could be little more than someone's 
idea of a cute joke...or it could be the joke it's claimed to be. -dave








  On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview
to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine..
  Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective
view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language
he created.
  By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had
bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its
contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these
things, there was a leak..
  Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and
unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews..
  You will find it interesting....

__________________________________________________

Interviewer:  Well, it's been a few years since you changed the
       world of software design, how does it feel, looking back?
Stroustrup:  Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before
       you arrived.  Do you remember?  Everyone was writing 'C' and,
       the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it..Universities
       got pretty good at teaching it, too.  They were turning out
       competent - I stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a
       phenomenal rate.  That's what caused the problem..
Interviewer:  Problem?
Stroustrup:  Yes, problem.  Remember when everyone wrote Cobol?
Interviewer:  Of course, I did too
Stroustrup:  Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods.
       Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty..
Interviewer:  Those were the days, eh?
Stroustrup:  Right.  So what happened?  IBM got sick of it, and invested
       millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a dozen..
Interviewer:  That's why I got out.  Salaries dropped within a year,
         to the point where being a journalist actually paid better..
Stroustrup:  Exactly.  Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers..
Interviewer:  I see, but what's the point?
Stroustrup:  Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought
      of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I
      thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language
      so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be
      able to swamp the market with programmers?  Actually, I got
      some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows.  That was
      such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those
      Sun 3/60 things..They had all the ingredients for what I wanted.
      A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and
      pseudo-OO structure.  Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows
      code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your = 
      sanity..
Interviewer:  You're kidding...?
Stroustrup:  Not a bit of it.  In fact, there was another problem..
      Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer
      could very easily become a systems programmer.  Remember
      what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?
Interviewer:  You bet I do, that's what I used to do..
Stroustrup:  OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from
      Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two
      together so nicely.  This would enable guys who only knew
      about DOS to earn a decent living too..
Interviewer:  I don't believe you said that....
Stroustrup:  Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most
      people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste
      of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I
      thought it would..
Interviewer:  So how exactly did you do it?
Stroustrup:  It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought
      people would take the book seriously.  Anyone with half a
      brain can see that object-oriented programming is
      counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient..
Interviewer:  What?
Stroustrup:  And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear
      of a company re-using its code?
Interviewer:  Well, never, actually, but....
Stroustrup:  There you are then.  Mind you, a few tried, in the early
      days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphics, I
      think they were called - really caught a cold trying to rewrite
      everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I felt sorry for them
      really, but I thought people would learn from their mistakes..
Interviewer:  Obviously, they didn't?
Stroustrup:  Not in the slightest.  Trouble is, most companies
      hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30
      million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult..
      Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end..
Interviewer:  They did?  Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works..
Stroustrup:  Well, almost.  The executable was so huge, it took five
      minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM.
      Then it ran like treacle.  Actually, I thought this would be a
      major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but
      nobody cared.  Sun and HP were only too glad to sell enormously
      powerful boxes, with huge resources just to run trivial programs.
      You know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled
      'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the executable.
      2.1MB
Interviewer:  What?  Well, compilers have come a long way, since then..
Stroustrup:  They have?  Try it on the latest version of g++ - you
      won't get much change out of half a megabyte.  Also, there
      are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the
      world.  British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands
      but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start
      again.  They were luckier than Australian Telecom.  Now I
      hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more
      and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger, to
      accommodate the executables.  Isn't multiple inheritance a joy?
Interviewer:  Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language..
Stroustrup:  You really believe that, don't you?  Have you ever sat
      down and worked on a C++ project?  Here's what happens:
      First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only the
      most trivial projects will work first time.  Take operator
      overloading.  At the end of the project, almost every module
      has it, usually, because guys feel they really should do it,
      as it was in their training course.  The same operator then
      means something totally different in every module. Try pulling
      that lot together, when you have a hundred or so modules.
      And as for data hiding.  God, I sometimes can't help laughing
      when I hear about the problem companies have making their
      modules talk to each other. I think the word 'synergistic' was
      specially invented to twist the knife in a project manager's
      ribs..
Interviewer:  I have to say, I'm beginning to be quite appalled at
      all this.  You say you did it to raise programmers'
      salaries?  That's obscene..
Stroustrup:  Not really.  Everyone has a choice.  I didn't expect the
      thing to get so much out of hand.  Anyway, I basically
      succeeded.  C++ is dying off now, but programmers still get high
      salaries - especially those poor devils who have to maintain all
      this crap. You do realise, it's impossible to maintain a large C++
      software module if you didn't actually write it?
Interviewer:  How come?
Stroustrup:  You are out of touch, aren't you?  Remember the typedef?
Interviewer:  Yes, of course..
Stroustrup:  Remember how long it took to grope through the header
      files only to find that 'RoofRaised' was a double precision
      number?  Well, imagine how long it takes to find all the
      implicit typedefs in all the Classes in a major project..
Interviewer:  So how do you reckon you've succeeded?
Stroustrup:  Remember the length of the average-sized 'C' project?
      About 6 months.  Not nearly long enough for a guy with a
      wife and kids to earn enough to have a decent standard of
      living.  Take the same project, design it in C++ and what do
      you get?  I'll tell you.  One to two years.  Isn't that
      great?  All that job security, just through one mistake of
      judgement.  And another thing.  The universities haven't
      been teaching 'C' for such a long time, there's now a
      shortage of decent 'C' programmers.  Especially those who
      know anything about Unix systems programming.  How many
      guys would know what to do with 'malloc', when they've used
      'new' all these years - and never bothered to check the return
      code.  In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return
      codes.  Whatever happened to good ol' '-1'?  At least you
      knew you had an error, without bogging the thing down in all
      that 'throw' 'catch' 'try' stuff..
Interviewer:  But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time?
Stroustrup:  Does it?  Have you ever noticed the difference between
      a 'C' project plan, and a C++ project plan?  The planning
      stage for a C++ project is three times as long.  Precisely
      to make sure that everything which should be inherited is,
      and what shouldn't isn't.  Then, they still get it wrong..
      Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C' program?  Now finding
      them is a major industry.  Most companies give up, and send
      the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to
      avoid the expense of tracking them all down..
Interviewer:  There are tools.....
Stroustrup:  Most of which were written in C++..
Interviewer:  If we publish this, you'll probably get lynched, you
      do realise that?
Stroustrup:  I doubt it.  As I said, C++ is way past its peak now,
      and no company in its right mind would start a C++ project
      without a pilot trial.  That should convince them that it's
      the road to disaster.  If not, they deserve all they get.. You
      know, I tried to convince Dennis Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++..
Interviewer:  Oh my God.  What did he say?
Stroustrup:  Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor.  I think
      both he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early
      days, but never let on.  He said he'd help me write a C++
      version of DOS, if I was interested..
Interviewer:  Were you?
Stroustrup:  Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I'll give you a demo
      when we're through.  I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the
      computer room.  Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU's, and only
      takes up 70 megs of disk..
Interviewer:  What's it like on a PC?
Stroustrup:  Now you're kidding.  Haven't you ever seen Windows '95?
      I think of that as my biggest success.  Nearly blew the game
      before I was ready, though..
Interviewer:  You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me
      thinking.  Somewhere out there, there's a guy going to try it..
Stroustrup:  Not after they read this interview..
Interviewer:  I'm sorry, but I don't see us being able to publish
      any of this..
Stroustrup:  But it's the story of the century.  I only want to be
      remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I've done for
      them.  You know how much a C++ guy can get these days?
Interviewer:  Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an =
      hour..
Stroustrup:  See?  And I bet he earns it.  Keeping track of all the
      gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job.  And, as I said
      before, every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic
      promise to use every damn element of the language on every
      project.  Actually, that really annoys me sometimes, even
      though it serves my original purpose.  I almost like the
      language after all this time..
Interviewer:  You mean you didn't before?
Stroustrup:  Hated it.  It even looks clumsy, don't you agree?  But
      when the book royalties started to come in...  well, you get
      the picture..
Interviewer:  Just a minute.  What about references?  You must
      admit, you improved on 'C' pointers..
Stroustrup:  Hmm.  I've always wondered about that.  Originally, I
      thought I had.  Then, one day I was discussing this with a
      guy who'd written C++ from the beginning.  He said he could
      never remember whether his variables were referenced or
      dereferenced, so he always used pointers.  He said the
      little asterisk always reminded him..
Interviewer:  Well, at this point, I usually say 'thank you very
      much' but it hardly seems adequate..
Stroustrup:  Promise me you'll publish this.  My conscience is
     getting the better of me these days..
Interviewer:  I'll let you know, but I think I know what my editor
      will say..
Stroustrup:  Who'd believe it anyway?  Although, can you send me a
      copy of that tape?
Interviewer:  I can do that..