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Return to Design and Evolution of C++ (D&E) by Bjarne Stroustrup

Part I goes through the design, evolution, use, and standardization of C++ in roughly chronological order. I chose this organization because during the early years, major design decisions map onto the timeline as a neat, logical sequence. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 describe the origins of C++ and its evolution through C with Classes to Release 1.0. Chapter 4 describes the rules that guided C++’s growth during that period and beyond. Chapter 5 provides a chronology of post-1.0 developments, and Chapter 6 describes the ANSI/ISO C++ standards effort. To provide perspective, Chapters 7 and 8 discuss applications, tools, and libraries. Finally, Chapter 9 presents a retrospective and some thoughts on the future.

Part II presents the post-Release-1.0 development of C++. The language grew within a framework laid down around the time of Release 1.0. This framework included a set of desired features, such as templates and exception handling, and rules guiding their design. After Release 1.0, chronology didn’t matter much to the development of C++. The current definition of C++ would have been substantially the same had the chronological sequence of post-1.0 extensions been different. The actual sequence in which the problems were solved and features provided is therefore of historical interest only. A strictly chronological presentation would interfere with the logical flow of ideas, so Part II is organized around major language features instead. Part II chapters are independent, so they can be read in any order: Chapter 10, memory management; Chapter 11, overloading; Chapter 12, multiple inheritance; Chapter 13, class concept refinements; Chapter 14, casting; Chapter 15, templates; Chapter 16, exception handling; Chapter 17, namespaces; Chapter 18, the C preprocessor.

Different people expect radically different things from a book on the design and evolution of a programming language. In particular, no two people seem to agree on what level of detail is appropriate for a discussion of this topic. Every review I received on the various versions of the HOPL-2 paper (well over a dozen reviews) was of the form, “This paper is too long … please add information on topics X, Y, and Z.” Worse, about a third of the reviews had comments of the form, “Cut the philosophical/religious nonsense and give us proper technical details instead.” Another third commented, “Spare me the boring details and add information on your design philosophy.”

To wiggle out of this dilemma, I have written a book within a book. If you are not interested in details, then at first skip all subsections (numbered §x.y.z, where x is the chapter number and y is the section number). Later, read whatever else looks interesting. You can also read this book sequentially starting at page one and carry on until the end. Doing that, you might get bogged down in details. This is not meant to imply that details are unimportant. On the contrary, no programming language can be understood by considering principles and generalizations only; concrete examples are essential. However, looking at the details without an overall picture to fit them into is a way of getting seriously lost.

As an additional help, I have concentrated most of the discussion of new features and features generally considered advanced in Part II. This allows Part I to concentrate on basics. Almost all of the information on nontechnical aspects of C++’s evolution is found in Part I. People with little patience for “philosophy” can break up the discussion in Chapters 4 through 9 by looking ahead to the technical details of language features in Part II.

I assume that some will use this book as a reference and that many will read individual chapters without bothering with all preceding chapters. To make such use feasible, I have made the individual chapters relatively self-contained for the experienced C++ programmer and been liberal with cross references and index terms.

Please note that I don’t try to define the features of C++ here, I present only as much detail as is necessary to provide a self-contained description of how the features came about. I don’t try to teach C++ programming or design either; for a tutorial, see [2nd].

Fair Use Sources:

• BS D&E, 1994