
Creator of C++: Bell Labs, Negative Overhead Abstraction, Mistakes | Bjarne Stroustrup
From The Peterman Pod by Ryan Peterman
May 18, 2026 ยท 1h 59m
About this episode
Bjarne Stroustrup discusses the creation of C++ and shares insights from his time at Bell Labs.
Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of the C++ programming language and a former researcher at Bell Labs. We talked about what Bell Labs was like, programming language design, and interesting anecdotes from his experience. โข My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/ ๐ฃ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ธ๐: โข YouTube: https://youtu.be/U46fJ2bJ-co โข Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 โข Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-c-bell-labs-negative-overhead ๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐ป๐ธ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐ถ๐๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ'๐ ๐๐ฝ๐ผ๐ป๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐บ๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ: โข Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at https://cursor.com/ โข WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/ ๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ๐๐๐ฎ๐บ๐ฝ๐: 0:00 - Intro 0:50 - The origin of C++ 8:46 - What Bell Labs was like 17:24 - Dennis Ritchie 24:00 - When to build a programming language 31:59 - Bootstrapping a language 33:58 - C++ is not object-oriented 37:32 - Discussing type systems 46:20 - Memoryโฆ
People in this episode
Host: Ryan Peterman
Guest: Bjarne Stroustrup
Topics covered
- C++ programming language
- Bell Labs
- programming language design
- memory safety
- type systems
- automatic garbage collection
Keywords
- C++
- Bell Labs
- programming languages
- memory safety
- type systems
- automatic garbage collection
- software development
Sponsors
Cursor 3, WorkOS
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Bell Labs
Products: Cursor 3
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