Bjarne Stroustrup

Danish computer scientist, creator of C++ (born 1950) · Denmark · Developers

Bjarne Stroustrup is read about 530 times a day, in 56 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.

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He built C++, the language that runs beneath billions of devices - from operating systems to game engines to the Mars rovers - and spent four decades refining it while the rest of the industry argued whether it should exist at all.

A life in dates

2018Charles Stark Draper PrizeAwardComputer Pioneer AwardAwardJohn Scott AwardAward2017Faraday MedalAward2015Dahl-Nygaard PrizeAward2014“One of the things I really like about programming languages is that it's the perfect excuse to stick your nose into any field.”In their words28 April 2014"Bjarne Stroustrup - The Essence of C++" talk at the University of Edinburgh's George Square Lecture Theatre (28 April 2014)Read the whole statement

2013“Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer.”In their wordsp. 467Read the whole statement

“Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.”In their wordsp. 693Read the whole statement

“A program that has not been tested does not work.”In their wordsp. 712Read the whole statement

“An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.”In their wordsp. 713Read the whole statement

2010Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific ResearchAward2007“Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naïve or a salesman.”In their words"C++ 0x - An Overview" (2007) at University of Waterloo Computer Science ClubRead the whole statement

2005William Procter Prize for Scientific AchievementAward1994ACM FellowAward1993Grace Murray Hopper AwardAward1950Born30 December 1950

Also in Deutsch

Photos 2

Stroustrup (standing on left) at the March 1996 Santa Cruz meeting of the C++ Standards Committee

In their own words 10

Bjarne Stroustrup

10 statements, newest first

If you do anything useful it will haunt you forever after, and if you have a major success you get decades of hard manual labor - meaning you have to work on the manual.
Aug 27, 2014, "C++ Q&A Community Event with Bjarne Stroustrup" (27 August 2014) · 3m 20s, Own words
One of the things I really like about programming languages is that it's the perfect excuse to stick your nose into any field.
Apr 28, 2014, "Bjarne Stroustrup - The Essence of C++" talk at the University of Edinburgh's George Square Lecture Theatre (28 April 2014), Own words
Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer.
2013, p. 467, Own words

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Awards

Charles Stark Draper Prize2018

Computer Pioneer Award2018

John Scott Award2018

Faraday Medal2017

Dahl-Nygaard Prize2015

Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research2010

William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement2005

ACM Fellow1994

Grace Murray Hopper Award1993

Computer History Museum Fellow

IEEE Fellow

GitHub

@BjarneStroustrup

Followers4,678

Public repos3

About this person

Born in Denmark in 1950, Stroustrup created C++ at Bell Labs in the 1980s as an extension of C, aiming to bring object-oriented design to systems programming without sacrificing speed. He led Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research group, then taught at Texas A&M for years while continuing to evolve the language through standards committees and new editions of his foundational books. A decade-plus stint at Morgan Stanley ran parallel to a visiting professorship at Columbia, where he became a full professor in 2022. In 2026 he added a part-time technical fellowship at quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group, still working on the language that refuses to die.

Country

Denmark

Developers from Denmark 6

David Heinemeier Hansson75.2

Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen41.9

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