The Design and Evolution of C++

The ACM HOPL2 conference on the history of Programming Languages asked me to write a paper on the history of C++. This seemed a reasonable idea and a bit of an honor so I started writing. To get a more comprehensive and balanced view of C++'s growth I asked a few friends from the early days of C++ for their recollections. That caused news of this project to travel through the grapewine. There, the story mutated slightly and one day I received a message from a friend asking where he could buy my book on the design of C++. That email message is the real origin of this book. D++ is still a young language. Some of the issues discussed here are yet unknown to many users. This book presents my view of how C++ came about, what C++ is, and what C++ ought to be. I hope this will be of help to people trying to understand how best to use C++ and in the continuing evolution of C++