"Clearly, I reject the view that there is one way that is right for everyone and for every problem"
About this Quote
Stroustrup is smuggling a whole philosophy of engineering into a sentence that sounds almost bland. The pointed word is "Clearly": a sly pre-buttal aimed at the kind of technologist who treats taste as math and methodology as morality. He isn’t just disagreeing with dogma; he’s refusing the impulse to turn tools into creeds.
The intent lands in the long shadow of C++ itself. Stroustrup built a language designed to live with constraints: legacy systems, performance budgets, hardware realities, teams with different skill levels, and software that has to evolve without being rewritten from scratch. In that world, insisting on "one way" is less principled than it is naive. The subtext is that correctness is conditional, and engineering is the art of trading one pain for another with your eyes open.
There’s also a quiet critique of fashion cycles in tech: the periodic rise of "one true paradigm" thinking, whether it’s pure object orientation, pure functional programming, or today’s taste for opinionated frameworks that promise salvation through convention. Stroustrup’s line resists the comforting fantasy that complexity can be bullied into simplicity by decree.
What makes it work rhetorically is its humility paired with firmness. He doesn’t claim relativism for its own sake; he claims pluralism because reality forces it. It’s a scientist’s sensibility applied to human systems: results matter, contexts vary, and anyone selling a universal key is usually selling something else.
The intent lands in the long shadow of C++ itself. Stroustrup built a language designed to live with constraints: legacy systems, performance budgets, hardware realities, teams with different skill levels, and software that has to evolve without being rewritten from scratch. In that world, insisting on "one way" is less principled than it is naive. The subtext is that correctness is conditional, and engineering is the art of trading one pain for another with your eyes open.
There’s also a quiet critique of fashion cycles in tech: the periodic rise of "one true paradigm" thinking, whether it’s pure object orientation, pure functional programming, or today’s taste for opinionated frameworks that promise salvation through convention. Stroustrup’s line resists the comforting fantasy that complexity can be bullied into simplicity by decree.
What makes it work rhetorically is its humility paired with firmness. He doesn’t claim relativism for its own sake; he claims pluralism because reality forces it. It’s a scientist’s sensibility applied to human systems: results matter, contexts vary, and anyone selling a universal key is usually selling something else.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Bjarne
Add to List
