REDMOND, Wash., March 13, 2002 — Herb Sutter, secretary of the ISO/ANSI C++ standards committee and acclaimed C++ author and expert, has joined Microsoft Corp. in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division. Sutter joins the company’s growing ranks of recognized C++ experts, including Stanley Lippman, a C++ pioneer who joined Microsoft in October 2001.
Sutter’s primary role will be to represent Microsoft’s commitment to C++ as a liaison to the C++ developer community. Sutter also will engage in product planning and design efforts for Microsoft® Visual C++® .NET, Microsoft’s language for building powerful applications for Microsoft .NET and the Windows®
operating system.
“Herb’s involvement in the C++ community will allow Microsoft to better work with developers building great applications in C++ and ultimately help drive the direction of our Visual C++ .NET tool,” said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft.
A recognized expert on C++ software development, Sutter is the author of “Exceptional C++” and “More Exceptional C++,” as well as two titles in Bjarne Stroustrup’s acclaimed “C++ In Depth” series. He is also a contributing editor and columnist for the C/C++ User’s Journal.
“I’m excited by Microsoft’s renewed commitment to the C++ language and community,” Sutter said. “I’m looking forward to being part of a team committed to having its product become the world’s most standards-conforming compiler and library.”
Sutter brings 15 years of in-the-trenches commercial software development and research experience to Microsoft from a variety of settings ranging from government agencies to major banks to independent software companies. Most recently, Sutter served as chief technology officer at PeerDirect Inc. from 1996 until 2000. Previously, he held positions at Linkage Software and also provided software consulting to a wide range of companies. Sutter is the creator of patents covering several dozen innovations in the fields of distributed database design and organization, distributed network organization, and cryptographic security for databases. He is also an alumnus of the ISO/ANSI SQL standards committee.
Microsoft Reinforces Commitment to Open Standards With Visual C++ .NET
Microsoft also is announcing its commitment to bringing Visual C++ .NET into compliance with the ISO/IEC 14882-1998 C++ Standard.
“Widely available C++ tools in conformance with the ISO standards help to minimize development costs such as training, skills transfer, testing, third-party libraries and components, source analysis tools, and application development,” said Thomas Plum, convener of the ISO C++ standards committee.
“Conformance to established industry standards is vital to the success of .NET,” said Nick Hodapp, product manager for Visual C++ .NET at Microsoft. “This is a great example of Microsoft’s dedication to open standards and to the thriving C++ developer community.”
The C++ language was invented by Bjarne Stroustrup at AT & T Bell Labs and was first implemented commercially in 1985. In the following decade, it gained popularity as the most powerful language for developing a wide variety of applications targeting a number of computing platforms, including Microsoft Windows. C++ was ratified as a language standard by ISO/ANSI in 1997.
Microsoft’s extensive history with C++ began in 1992 with the Microsoft C/C++ 7.0 compiler, which became Visual C++ in 1993. Visual C++ .NET, the most recent version of the tool, was launched as part of the Visual Studio®
.NET development system Feb. 13, 2002.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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