Bjarne Stroustrup quotes

Bjarne Stroustrup is a Danish computer scientist, renowned as the creator of the C++ programming language. His work has profoundly influenced modern software development and programming languages. He continues to contribute to computer science through research, teaching, and writing. Here are 45 of his quotes:

An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naïve or a salesman.

Bjarne Stroustrup

"How to test?" is a question that cannot be answered in general. "When to test?" however, does have a general answer: as early and as often as possible.

Bjarne Stroustrup

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

Bjarne Stroustrup

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

Bjarne Stroustrup

A program that has not been tested does not work.

Bjarne Stroustrup

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.

Bjarne Stroustrup

There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful - many more.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Proof by analogy is fraud.

Bjarne Stroustrup

[Corporate programming] is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate "culture" with no outlet for unique talents and skills. Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.

Bjarne Stroustrup

I do not think that safety should be bought at the cost of complicating the expression of good solutions to real-life problems.

Bjarne Stroustrup

There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Far too often, "software engineering" is neither engineering nor about software.

Bjarne Stroustrup

The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer.

Bjarne Stroustrup

People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we don't.

Bjarne Stroustrup

One of the things I really like about programming languages is that it's the perfect excuse to stick your nose into any field. So if you're interested in high energy physics and the structure of the universe, being a programmer is one of the best ways to get in there. It's probably easier than becoming a theoretical physicist.

Bjarne Stroustrup

The standard library saves programmers from having to reinvent the wheel.

Bjarne Stroustrup

However, when Java is promoted as the sole programming language, its flaws and limitations become serious.

Bjarne Stroustrup

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either.

Bjarne Stroustrup

If you do anything useful it will haunt you forever after, and if you have a major success you get decades of hard manual labor - meaning you have to work on the manual.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.

Bjarne Stroustrup