isocpp.org | Bulldozer00's Blog

Staying Sane

November 16, 2013 bulldozer00 Leave a comment

Standardization is long periods of mind-numbing boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror – Bjarne Stroustrup

In his ACCU2013 talk, “C++14 Early Thoughts“, Bjarne Stroustrup presented this slide:

By using “we” in each bullet point, Bjarne was referring to the ISO WG-1 C++ committee and the daunting challenges it faces to successfully move the language forward.

Not only do the committee leaders have to manage the external onslaught of demands from a huge, dedicated user base, they have to homogenize the internal communications amongst many smart and assertive members. To illustrate the internal management problem, Bjarne said something akin to: “There is no topic the committee isn’t willing to discuss at length for two years“.

In order to prevent being overwhelmed with work, the committee uses this set of grass roots principles to filter out the incoming chaff from the wheat:

I have no idea how internal conflicts are handled, nor how infinite loops of technical debate are exited, but since the all-volunteer committee is still functioning and doing a great job (IMO) of modernizing the language, there’s got to be some magic at work here:

Categories: C++ Tags: Bjarne Stroustrup, c++, ISO, isocpp.org, programming, Programming language

Two Peas In A Pod

July 28, 2013 bulldozer00 Leave a comment

It’s funny how I never know which, if any, of my bogus posts will have the potential to generate an above average number of hits on this blog. The posts that I thought may have triggered a rise above the average daily hit count (approximately 50) never have. The posts that have indeed appreciably crossed the threshold, I never thought would. In four years of blogging, not a single one of my a-priori guesses has come true.

When I stitched together “The Point Of No Return” post, I thought “meh“; it’s just another average, unenlightening BD00 post. However, somehow, somewhere, some kind soul on the blog staff at the official ISO C++ org web site decided otherwise. He/she thought it useful enough to post a link to it right smack on the site’s home page:

W00T! Me and my man Bjarne Stroustrup on the same page – like two peas in a pod. Do ya think Bjarne would appreciate the BD00 connection?

The dashboard below shows the spike in traffic experienced by BD00’s blog as a result of the generous plug from the blog staff at isocpp.org. I surely hope that the wordpress.com server farm didn’t crash from the sudden surge in traffic!