Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
How I met the creator of C++
July 18, 2007, 2:56 am
I attended a lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++ today at UW. It was sponsored by the UW CS Club. Now, do you think I know who that guy was, or even who the inventor of C++ is? The answer is no, I have no clue. Needless to say, it was Mike’s idea.
The lecture was called C++0x - An Overview, essentially an overview of the next generation of C++. When I first heard the title, I thought it was some clever pun with hexadecimal (you know, 0xFFFFFF). Yeah, shows how much I know. The ‘x’ actually stands for the year they will finally get around to releasing it, right now, they are aiming for 2009, or C++09. The last version was C++98. Right, I know what that is…
The lecture itself wasn’t overly exciting, but then, what do you expect with such a topic? I learned that the whole process consist of a bunch of committees around the world, ("standards committee") who basically argue all day about should and should not be added to the language. Seems like they’ve been arguing and debating for the better part of a decade. Possible things they are going to add is easier initialization of values in a vector, easier templating, and gasp, “programmer-controlled automatic garbage collection”.
Feel free to google ”WG21” to learn more.
At the end, Mike got his C++ book signed. He thought there would be a crowd, but no, only three other people had books for the guy to sign. Surprisingly really, since the lecture was standing room only in one of the Arts Lecture halls. I think it’s because CSers don’t buy these types of books unless it’s a required textbook.
Hehe, I feel unworthy to wear my mathie ring or the pink tie. In one of the slides, Stroustrup had an example array called “geek heroes”. I did not recognize a single one of those names. Mike knew some of them, of course. The dude’s a freak, what can I say?
Tagged: Geek
Comments (2)
Oh you are lucky. I actually learned C++ from his textbook (2nd edition!) that I borrowed from my uncle who got it for training.
Those were the days, when C++ reigned, and Java/.net had yet to exist.
Haha, whereas I, the CSer, have never read a C++ book.
© Maggie Tam 2007-2009 www.onechopstick.ca
Powered by Expression Engine 
Blog Feed