Editing Bjarne Stroustrup (section)

===C++===
[[Image:C++ Standards Committee meeting - March 1996 Santa Cruz - Wednesday general session.jpg|thumb|right|Stroustrup (standing on left) at the March 1996 Santa Cruz meeting of the C++ Standards Committee]]

Stroustrup is best known for his work on C++. In 1979, he began developing C++ (initially called "[[C (programming language)|C]] with Classes"). In his own words, he "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation [...] chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee." C++ was made generally available in 1985. For non-commercial use, the source code of the compiler and the foundation libraries was the cost of shipping (US$75); this was before Internet access was common. Stroustrup also published a textbook for the language in 1985, ''[[The C++ Programming Language]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://stroustrup.com/4th.html|title=The C++ Programming Language|last=Stroustrup|first=Bjarne|date=2 January 2020|website=stroustrup.com|access-date=2 January 2020|archive-date=31 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191231123826/http://www.stroustrup.com/4th.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are:

* A static type system with equal support for built-in types and user-defined types (that requires control of the construction, destruction, copying, and movement of objects; and [[operator overloading]]).
* Value and reference semantics. 
* Systematic and general resource management ([[Resource acquisition is initialization|RAII]]): constructors, destructor, and exceptions relying on them.
* Support for efficient object-oriented programming: based on the [[Simula]] model with statically checked interfaces, [[multiple inheritance]], and efficient implementation based on [[Virtual method table|virtual function tables]].
* Support for flexible and efficient [[generic programming]]: templates with specialization and concepts.
* Support for compile-time programming: [[template metaprogramming]] and compile-time evaluated functions ("constexpr functions").
* Direct use of machine and operating system resources.
* Concurrency support through libraries (where necessary, implemented using intrinsics).

Stroustrup documented his principles guiding the design of C++ and the evolution of the language in his 1994 book, ''The Design and Evolution of C++'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://stroustrup.com/dne.html|title=The Design and Evolution of C++|last=Stroustrup|first=Bjarne|date=2 January 2020|website=stroustrup.com|access-date=2 January 2020|archive-date=31 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191231123827/http://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html|url-status=live}}</ref> and three papers for ACM's History of Programming Languages conferences.<ref name=history>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.stroustrup.com/hopl2.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120816114431/http://www.stroustrup.com/hopl2.pdf |archive-date=2012-08-16 |url-status=live|doi=10.1145/155360.155375|title=A History of C++: 1979– 1991|last=Stroustrup|first=Bjarne|date=2 January 2020|website=stroustrup.com}}</ref><ref name=evolving>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1145/1238844.1238848|url=http://www.stroustrup.com/hopl-almost-final.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.stroustrup.com/hopl-almost-final.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991–2006|last=Stroustrup|first=Bjarne|date=2 January 2020|website=stroustrup.com|s2cid=7518369 }}</ref><ref name=thriving>{{Cite journal|title=Thriving in a crowded and changing world: C++ 2006–2020|last=Stroustrup|first=Bjarne|date=June 2020|journal=Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages|volume=4|pages=1–168|doi=10.1145/3386320|s2cid=219603741|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Stroustrup was a founding member of the C++ standards committee (from 1989, it was an ANSI committee and from 1991 an ISO committee) and has remained an active member ever since. For 24 years he chaired the subgroup chartered to handle proposals for language extensions (Evolution Working Group).