Lambda the Ultimate

Yet another in the series of draft papers for HOPL-III. This one from Bjarne Stroustrup on Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006. The paper starts the discussion at the point in time where his 1994 Design and Evolution book ended (which coincides with about the last time I used C++ on a professional basis - meaning I got some insight into what I missed out on for the last dozen years).

The talk outlines the history of the C++ programming language from the early days of its ISO standardization (1991), through the 1998 ISO standard, to the later stages of the C++0x revision of that standard (2007). The emphasis is on the ideals, constraints, programming techniques, and people that shaped the language, rather than the minutiae of language features. Among the major themes are the emergence of generic programming and the STL (the C++ standard library’s algorithms and containers).

Given the period of time covered, generics and the STL are the major highights of the paper. Lots of political discussion (the parts on Sun and Microsoft are mostly obvious, but it's amusing to see Bjarne speak out on the subjects). Much like the Design and Evolution book, this paper is worth a read by anyone interested in PL design, no matter their particular take on C++. Bjarne provides valuable insight on the forces that shape PLs, as well as providing constructive criticism.

Personally I found the discussion on C++0x the most interesting, as it reveals the issues that C++ is trying to overcome as well as the direction the language is headed. I've been tinkering with Boost of late, trying to figure out the FP facilities, but without much luck. Similar to C#3.0 and Java1.7, C++0x is proposing lambdas and a limited form of type inference for variables. But that's a minor addendum, as the paper makes clear that optional GC, concurrency and more thorough libraries are the major aspects to be addressed.