The CodeRage 7 online conference took the opportunity to interview the creator of C++ Bjarne Stoustrup. He discusses the difficulty of letting go of his language to a standards committee, what makes it special and where it should be going.

The title of this news items stems from Bjarne's first comment that the online conference was showing him a picture with him sitting at his desk which was some kind of recursive joke because he was sitting at his desk viewing it. Programmer's have a unique view of the world - QED.

The humour continues for a few more minutes but the interview soon settles down to discuss serious topics. First he describes how that C++ Foundation came about and how reluctant he was to let go of control of his invention. The also likens C++ to an elephant - but I think you need to view the video to see what he means.

Bjarne's one line definition of C++:

"A light-weight abstraction programming language"

Perhaps an elephant isn't the best simile.

On looking at some C++ text books:

"If that's C++ I don't like it either!"

Interestingly he seems to think of C++11 as more like a new language than just a simple development on C++.