How did you feel about C++ becoming standardized in 1998 and how were you involved with the standardization process?

I worked hard on that standard for years (1989-1997) - as I am now working on its successor standard: C++0x. Keeping a main-stream language from fragmenting into feuding dialects is a hard and essential task. C++ has no owner or "sugar daddy" to supply development muscle, "free" libraries, and marketing. The ISO standard committee was essential for the growth of the C++ community and that community owes an enormous amount to the many volunteers who worked (and work) on the committee.

What is the most interesting program that you've seen written with C++?

I can't pick one and I don't usually think of a program as interesting. I look more at complete systems - of which parts are written in C++. Among such systems, NASA's Mars Rovers' autonomous driving sub-system, the Google search engine, and Amadeus' airline reservation system spring to mind. Looking at code in isolation, I think Alexander Stepanov' STL (the containers, iterators, and libraries part of the C++ standard library) is among the most interesting, useful, and influential pieces of C++ code I have ever seen.

Have you ever seen the language used in a way that was not originally intended?

I designed C++ for generality. That is, the features were deliberately designed to do things I couldn't possibly imagine - as opposed to enforce my views of what is good. In addition, the C++ abstraction facilities (e.g., classes and templates) were designed to be optimally fast when used on conventional hardware so that people could afford to build the basic abstractions they need for a given application area (such as complex numbers and resource handles) within the language.

So, yes, I see C++ used for many things that I had not predicted and used in many ways that I had not anticipated, but usually I'm not completely stunned. I expected to be surprised, I designed for it. For example, I was very surprised by the structure of the STL and the look of code using it - I thought I knew what good container uses looked like. However, I had designed templates to preserve and use type information at compile time and worked hard to ensure that a simple function such as less-than could be inlined and compiled down to a single machine instruction. That allowed the "weaving" of separately defined code into efficient executable code, which is key to the efficiency of the STL. The biggest surprise, I guess, was that the STL matched all but one of a long list of design criteria for a general purpose container architecture that I had compiled over the years, but the way STL code looked was entirely unexpected.

So I'm often pleased with the surprises, but many times I'm dismayed at the attempts to force C++ into a mold for which it is not suited because someone didn't bother to learn the basics of C++. Of course, people doing that don't believe that they are acting irrationally; rather, they think that they know how to program and that there is nothing new or different about C++ that requires them to change their habits and learn "new tricks." People who are confident in that way structure the code exactly as they would for, say, C or Java and are surprised when C++ doesn't do what they expect. Some people are even angry, though I don't see why someone should be angry to find that they need to be more careful with the type system in C++ than in C or that there is no company supplying 'free" and "standard" libraries for C++ as for Java. To use C++ well, you have to use the type system and you have to seek out or build libraries. Trying to build applications directly on the bare language or with just the standard library is wasteful of your time and effort. Fighting the type system (with lots of casts and macros) is futile.

It often feels like a large number of programmers have never really used templates, even if they are C++ programmers.

You may be right about that, but many at least - I think most - are using the templates through the STL (or similar foundation libraries) and I suspect that the number of programmers who avoid templates is declining.

Why do you think this is?

Fear of what is different from what they are used to, rumors of code bloat, potential linkage problems, and spectacular bad error messages.