Alexander Stepanov

Alexander Stepanov

Alexander Stepanov (born 16 November 1950) is a computer scientist and the key person behind the C++ Standard Template Library.

Quotes

I find OOP methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms - you start with proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them work.
- An Interview with A. Stepanov by Graziano Lo Russo. Retrieved on 2008-04-25.

Putting it simply, STL is the result of a bacterial infection.
- An Interview with A. Stepanov by Graziano Lo Russo. Retrieved on 2008-04-25.

I discovered the works of Euler and my perception of the nature of mathematics underwent a dramatic transformation. I was de-Bourbakized, stopped believing in sets, and was expelled from the Cantorian paradise. I still believe in abstraction, but now I know that one ends with abstraction, not starts with it. I learned that one has to adapt abstractions to reality and not the other way around. Mathematics stopped being a science of theories but reappeared to me as a science of numbers and shapes.
- Bjarne Stroustrup: Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006. ACM HOPL-III. June 2007.. Archived from the original on 2007-11-20. Retrieved on 2008-04-25.

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