Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of C++ and a former researcher at Bell Labs at its peak. I interviewed him about:
• What made Bell Labs different
• Programming language design: types, memory safety, bootstrapping
• When abstraction improves performance
• Anecdotes from building C++
• Thoughts on AI writing C++
• Mistakes he'd change while building C++
Where to watch:
• YouTube: https://t.co/THHTMP9VoT
• Spotify: https://t.co/5kVNWCYEAI
• Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/jOYDGtHtd1
• Transcript: https://t.co/5jmJQWVtWp
Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work:
• Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at https://t.co/PgHyLKgrxW
• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://t.co/y8noBzGc3U
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:50 - The origin of C++
8:46 - What Bell Labs was like
17:24 - Dennis Ritchie
24:00 - When to build a programming language
31:59 - Bootstrapping a language
33:58 - C++ is not object-oriented
37:32 - Discussing type systems
46:20 - Memory safety
49:26 - Standards committee anecdotes
1:09:40 - Adding automatic garbage collection to C++
1:18:25 - Template instantiation is Turing complete
1:21:57 - Abstraction and performance
1:28:51 - AI writing code
1:35:54 - His motivation
1:39:18 - Famous quotes
1:46:48 - Reflecting on building C++
1:49:12 - Top C++ book recommendation
1:50:59 - Advice for his younger self
1:58:06 - Outro
Singapore’s Foreign Minister, Dr Balakrishnan casually explaining how he built his own AI agent (a 2nd brain for diplomacy) using Claude & WhatsApp integration etc. on a Raspberry Pi
“You cannot govern a technology you have only been briefed on.” 🇸🇬