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Reviewer: Allan Blackman

The designer of C++ has produced a generally readable and literate account of the development of the language: an explanation and justification of difficult, sometimes agonizing, design decisions. He holds that language design isnt an exercise in pure thought, but a very practical exercise in balancing needs, ideals, techniques, and constraints. A good language is not merely designed, it is grown. The exercise has more to do with engineering, sociology, and philosophy than with mathematics. This view is amply supported by his experience, but only because Stroustrup was concerned, above all, that C++ be widely accepted and used by the often-intransigent C community and others. In this respect he has succeeded, since by 1992 over one million C++ compilers had been sold and C++ had become the most popular object-oriented language. Written for designers and sophisticated programmers, the presentation assumes a detailed knowledge of C++, but readers familiar with other languages can still read some sections with profit or can ob tain the background knowledge by consulting the authors earlier works [1,2] or other surveys of C++. The book is formally divided into two parts, but four parts can be distinguished. The first part (chapters 1 through 4) describes the development of the language from its prehistory through Release 1.0 of the compiler front-end Cfront, while the fourth part (chapters 10 through 18) reviews language attributes—memory management, overloading, multiple inheritance, class, casting, templates, exception handling, namespaces, and the C preprocessor—that were added or changed thereafter. The first part proceeds chronologically, but the fourth part is organized by language element. The second part (chapter 5) provides the post–Release 1.0 chronology and should be read immediately before the fourth part. The third part (chapters 6 through 9) deals with broad issues—standardization, use, libraries, and the future—and should have been placed last as a conclusion. The nonspecialist will find the early parts more readable than the last part. Depending on the readers interest, the value of this volume could lie in either the generalizations about language design or the rationales for particular language features. Among the former, Stroustrup repeatedly states that C++ was designed to combine Simulas classes with Cs efficiency. While maintaining that class is the proper basis of program organization and that the language designer should provide features that encourage such organization, he also emphasizes that C++ can and should accommodate different styles and that programmers should not be forced to adopt any one style. The fairly elaborate design rules for C++ are organized hierarchically. At the most general level are two aims. First, C++ makes programming more enjoyable for serious programmers. Second, C++ is a general-purpose programming language that is a better C, supports data abstraction, and supports object-oriented programming. By contrast, “provide as good support for user-defined types as for built-in types” is a low-level, language-technical rule. While Stroustrup admits that hindsight played a part in the formulation of these rules, he also says they were present in his thinking from the earliest days of the project. Although the author admits some errors and omissions, and has some definite ideas about how C++ should evolve, he is generally happy with what he has wrought. Since there is no accounting for taste in languages, some people will disagree, perhaps vehemently, with his design decisions and will deplore the final product. But Stroustrup must be commended for making his thinking available—as he has in his many papers and Internet postings—for all to examine, applaud, or criticize. Everyone interested in programming languages must attend to the issues raised in this volume.