Herb Sutter

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Herb Sutter is a prominent C++ expert. He is also an author of several books on C++ and was a columnist for Dr. Dobb's Journal.

Sutter was born and raised in Oakville, Ontario, and studied computer science at Canada's University of Waterloo.^{[1][independent source needed]}

From 1995 to 2001 he was chief technology officer at PeerDirect where he designed the PeerDirect database replication engine.^{[1][independent source needed]}

He joined Microsoft in 2002^[2] as a platform evangelist for Visual C++ .NET,^{[citation needed]} rising to lead software architect for C++/CLI.^[3][4] In recent years Sutter was lead designer for C++/CX and C++ AMP.^[4] In November 2024, after 22 years at Microsoft, Sutter left to join Citadel Securities.^[5]

Sutter has served as the chair of the ISO C++ standards committee since 2002.^[6][3][4]

In 2005, Sutter published an article titled "The Free Lunch Is Over"^[7] that claimed that microprocessor serial-processing speed was reaching a physical limit leading to two main consequences:

• Processor manufacturers would focus on products that better support multithreading (such as multi-core processors), and
• Software developers would be forced to develop massively multithreaded programs as a way to better use such processors.

The article is seen as highly influential in subsequent system design.^[8][9][3]

Cpp2
Logo endorsed by the C++ standards committee
Paradigms	Multi-paradigm: procedural, imperative, functional, object-oriented, generic, modular, reflective, Design by contract
Designed by	Herb Sutter
Developer	Herb Sutter
First appeared	2022
Typing discipline	Static, strong, nominative, partially inferred
OS	Cross-platform
Filename extensions	.cpp2
Website	hsutter.github.io/cppfront
Major implementations
cppfront
Influenced by
C++, C#, Rust, Swift, Go, TypeScript

Cpp2 is an experimental alternative syntax for C++ created by Herb Sutter, first developed in 2021 and announced in September 2022.^[10][11][12] Rather than a separate language, it is an alternative syntax that is transpiled down to standard C++ using the cppfront compiler (whose name is a reference to the Cfront compiler, which was created by Bjarne Stroustrup to transpile C++ down to C), uses the usual C++ Standard Library, and allows compatibility and coexistence with standard C++ syntax. Unlike standard C++ itself, Cpp2 code is order-independent (a function may be called earlier in a file even if its declaration appears later in the file).^[13] In addition, it advertises increased program safety (such as memory safety) over standard C++.^[14]

The following is a Hello World program in Cpp2:

main: () -> int = {
    std::println("Hello, world!");
}

A basic example with a type, is the following. In Cpp2, data members are private by default, while methods are public by default, but can otherwise be specified with private/protected/public.^[15]

using std::string;

Person: type = {
    name: string;

    getName: (this) = { return name; }
}

main: (args) -> int = {
    john: Person = ("John Doe");
    std::println("Hello, (john.getName())$!");
}

Cpp2 has its own reflection^[16] and contract^[17] systems that predate the native C++ reflection and contract systems (added in C++26), with support for metaclasses (a feature Sutter has also proposed for inclusion into standard C++).^[18]

• Exceptional C++ (Addison-Wesley, 2000, ISBN 0-201-61562-2)
• More Exceptional C++ (Addison-Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-201-70434-X)
• Exceptional C++ Style (Addison-Wesley, 2005, ISBN 0-201-76042-8)
• C++ Coding Standards (together with Andrei Alexandrescu, Addison-Wesley, 2005, ISBN 0-321-11358-6)

• Media related to Herb Sutter at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website
• Former website (last updated in 2011)
• Cpp2 and cppfront website, Cpp2/cppfront wiki