Most programming languages eventually accumulate so much secondary explanation that the original designer becomes just another citation.
Visit Bjarne Stroustrup’s homepage
Bjarne Stroustrup’s site avoids that problem. It is still one of the best places to read C++ history from the person who actually designed and implemented the language.
The homepage is almost aggressively straightforward: C++, FAQ, technical FAQ, publications, WG21 papers, books, interviews, videos, compiler links and biographical material. It behaves more like a researcher’s desk than a marketing site.
That matters because the FAQ contains details that are usually flattened into trivia elsewhere.
Stroustrup says he began work on what became C++ in 1979 under the name “C with Classes.” The first version called C++ was used internally at AT&T in 1983, and the first commercial implementation arrived in 1985 alongside the first edition of The C++ Programming Language.
He also explains why C compatibility mattered. The goal was not to bolt object-oriented syntax onto C for fashion. He wanted the performance and systems-programming flexibility of C while gaining stronger abstraction tools, and he was working down the hall from people such as Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan and other Bell Labs researchers.
The FAQ is historical evidence
The site’s best feature may be that it preserves arguments programmers have been having for decades.
Why is C++ so large? Why is it compatible with C? Is there such a thing as “C/C++”? Why didn’t it start as a pure object-oriented language? What was the first compiler written in?
Stroustrup answers these in his own voice, including the occasional irritation that comes from having the same misconception repeated for thirty years.
The site also links directly to his papers on C++ from 1979 through later standardization work, along with material on C++11, coding guidelines and the evolution of the language.
That is unusually valuable for software history. Technical history often gets rewritten through product documentation, tutorials and retrospective blog posts. Here, the designer’s explanations remain connected to the actual language evolution and the papers behind it.
The layout has changed less than the language.
Good.
For researchers, programmers and anyone trying to understand why C++ looks the way it does, a direct answer from the person who made the tradeoffs beats another summary written forty years later.