C++: The Documentary Charts 40 Years of Bjarne Stroustrup's Language

A new documentary tracing the 40-year history of C++ premiered on YouTube, featuring Bjarne Stroustrup alongside figures including Alexander Stepanov (STL), Anders Hejlsberg (C#, TypeScript), Brian Kernighan, Chris Lattner (LLVM, Swift), and John Romero (Doom). The film walks through the language’s origins as ‘C with Classes’ at AT&T Bell Labs, the rocky transition to C++ and CFront, the standardization push that produced C++98, and the modern revival kicked off by C++11.

Herb Sutter, who appears in the film and chairs the Standard C++ Foundation, notes that C++ is currently the fastest-growing language in the global top four as of Q3 2025, with user numbers up more than 90% over the past 3.5 years. The documentary also covers the early-2000s slump during the language-wars era with C#, the resurgence driven by demand for performant code, and ongoing debates about whether the standards committee has let the language grow too complex.