Bjarne Stroustrup

Stroustrup started work on "C with Classes" at Bell Labs in 1979. He had written his thesis in Simula, which had elegant object orientation but was too slow, and wanted the same expressive power with C's performance. The name C++ arrived in 1983, from the increment operator.

The guiding principle was that you don't pay for what you don't use — abstractions must not cost at runtime. The price was a language of considerable complexity, which Stroustrup himself has addressed by noting there are two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. He remains active in the standardisation work.