He designed C++ to solve your code problems

About this episode

Ryan welcomes Bjarne Stroustrup to discuss the history and future of C++ and its challenges.

Ryan welcomes Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++ and professor at Columbia, to the show to dive into all things C++, from its history to where it's going today. They discuss its first emergence as a way to bridge high-level abstractions with low-level systems control, the criticisms some have around memory safety and null pointers (and how to solve these problems in your code), and why “move to Rust” thinking is too simplistic for modern codebases.  Episode notes:  Keep up with everything happening with C++ at the Standard C++ Foundation’s website .  Connect with Bjarne on LinkedIn and explore more of his work at his website .  Congrats to Populist badge winner Michael Sorens for winning the badge for their answer to PowerShell equivalent for "head -n-3"? . TRANSCRIPT See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

People in this episode

Host: Ryan

Guest: Bjarne Stroustrup

Topics covered

• C++
• programming
• software development
• memory safety
• Rust

Keywords

• C++
• Bjarne Stroustrup
• memory safety
• null pointers
• Rust
• programming languages

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia, Standard C++ Foundation

More episodes of The Stack Overflow Podcast

• Developers are emotionally attached to their tools · June 12, 2026 · 34 min
• When the cost of code approaches zero, what does engineering leadership look like? · June 11, 2026 · 34 min
• Creating checkpoints by gaslighting a Postgres database · June 9, 2026 · 35 min
• Making the OWASP top ten in the vibe code era · June 5, 2026 · 34 min
• What it takes to be a player in the international AI game · June 2, 2026 · 26 min
• The find out stage of AI is just supply chain and password protection · May 29, 2026 · 31 min