A little OO humor

A little OO humor

[Thomas Hood]

This has with it as much attribution as I received it with...  I hope BS
doesn't get too bent outta shape by it.

Thomas Hood
thomas@ifn.com
>
>       The truth about 'C++' revealed
>
>                         cddukes@unity.ncsu.edu
>
>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. 
>
>[NJW Comment: That explains everything. Most of my thesis work was in raw
>X-windows. :)] 
>
>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 problems 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 inC++. 
>
>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.

Re: A little OO humor

[Bjarne Stroustrup]

A hoax pretending to be an interview with me by IEEE Computer from
January 1, 1998 has been doing the rounds. Over the last four months
or so, it was posted and re-posted in an incredible number of places.
In it, I'm quoted as making strong derogatory statements about C++ and
object-oriented programming. The opinions expressed that fake interview
are contrary to anything I have ever said about C++ and completely in
variance with a professional attitude.

However, now IEEE has done an interview with me for the June issue of
Computer Magazine. That real interview can be found at

	http://www.research.att.com/~bs/ieee_interview.html, and
	http://www.computer.org/computer/co1998/html/r6110.htm

I have on occation expressed the opinion that the fake interview was
less funny than it could have been. Predictably, someone suggested that
I write something better in the line of "geek humor" for April 1.
Have a look at

	http://www.research.att.com/~bs/whitespace98.pdf

from the English C++ Users' Group magazine "Overload" - April 98 issue
of course. It differes from the fake interview in many ways, not least
in that this article doesn't say or imply anything negative about anyone
or anyone's work.

	- Bjarne

Bjarne Stroustrup, AT&T Labs, http://www.research.att.com/~bs