STL之父Alex Stepanov访谈录

 

From:http://stl.winterxy.com/html/000024.html

STL之父Alex Stepanov访谈录

作者： winter

本文收录了两次对Alex Stepanov的访问，一次是Graziano Lo Russo Edizioni Infomedia srl写的，由荣耀翻译。另一个是dr.dobb's journal特约记者, 著名技术书籍作家al stevens采访的，有myan翻译。两篇采访对STL的发展和历史做了完备的介绍，收录至此。

STL之父A.Stepanov专访

Graziano Lo Russo Edizioni Infomedia srl 著 荣耀 译

问：

可以先做个自我简介吗？

答：

1950年11月16日，我出生于苏联莫斯科。在莫斯科大学研究数学，但我从未成为一名数学家。我实在不能对Tamagawa算术感到兴奋，尽管别人以为我擅长Coxeter群和一些别的东西。Hardy的念头对我毫无吸引力─他的数学从来都不打算被实用化。我想干一些哪怕只有那么一丁点儿实际意义的事。不过，话说回来，我还是幸运的，能够看到很多伟大的数学家是如何做的，使我能彻底对那些批着数学外衣的所谓严谨免疫。不幸的是，这在计算机科学中司空见惯。因此，能成为一名程序员对我来说真是一件好事。1972年，我作为一名小组成员，参与开发一个用于控制大型水电站的新的小型机系统。我参与了所有部分的设计，从架构到OS硬件测试（我的第一篇公开发表的论文就是关于实时操作系统的）到编程工具。我学到了关于软件可靠性和效率的第一手知识─电站系统是不能轻易重新启动的，水流也总是实时冲泄而下的。

详细查看STL之父A.Stepanov专访(中文版)

An Interview with A. Stepanov
by Graziano Lo Russo Edizioni Infomedia srl

Question:
May you introduce yourself?

Answer:
I was born in Moscow, USSR, on November 16, 1950, and studied Mathematics at the Moscow State University. But I never became a mathematician. I could not really get excited about Tamagawa numbers, Coxeter groups and other things that I was supposed to specialize in. Hardy's hope that his mathematics is never going to be applied is not for me. I need to do something a little bit more real. I was fortunate, however, to see some great mathematicians at work and became totally immune to a pseudo-mathematical rigor that unfortunately is so common in Computer Science. So becoming a programmer was a really good thing for me. In 1972 I became a member of a team developing a new minicomputer to be used to control large hydroelectric power stations. I participated in all parts of the design, from architecture and hardware testing to OS (my first published paper was on real-time operating systems) and programming tools. I learned first hand about both software reliability - power stations are hard to reboot - and efficiency - the water is coming down in real time.
 
Detail for An Interview with A. Stepanov (English Version)

STL之父访谈录  

翻译者 : myan

1995年3月，dr.dobb's journal特约记者, 著名技术书籍作家al stevens采访了stl创始人alexander stepanov. 这份访谈纪录是迄今为止对于stl发展历史的最完备介绍, 侯捷先生在他的stl有关文章里推荐大家阅读这篇文章. 因此我将该文全文翻译如下:

q: 您对于generic programming进行了长时间的研究, 请就此谈谈.
a: 我开始考虑有关gp的问题是在7o年代末期, 当时我注意到有些算法并不依赖于数据结构的特定实现，而只是依赖于该结构的几个基本的语义属性. 于是我开始研究大量不同的算法，结果发现大部分算法可以用这种方法从特定实现中抽象出来, 而且效率无损. 对我来说,效率是至关重要的, 要是一种算法抽象在实例化会导致性能的下降, 那可不够棒.

详细查看STL之父Alex Stepanov访谈录(中文版）

Al Stevens Interviews Alex Stepanov

Tell us something about your long-term interest in generic programming.

I started thinking about generic programming in the late 70s when I observed that some algorithms depended not on some particular implementation of a data structure but only on a few fundamental semantic properties of the structure. I started going through many different algorithms, and I found that most algorithms can be abstracted away from a particular implementation in such a way that efficiency is not lost. Efficiency is a fundamental concern of mine. It is silly to abstract an algorithm in such a way that when you instantiate it back it becomes inefficient.

detail for Al Stevens Interviews Alex Stepanov(English Version)