C++ History
C++ is a general purpose *high level programming language. It is the third most popular programming language behind Java and C. C++ provides object oriented and imperative features along with the low level memory manipulation features as well.
It was developed as an enhancement to C language by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 at AT&T Bell Labs. In the develpment of C++, the major improvement was the introduction of classes in C therefore it was named as C with Classes but later on in 1983 it was named as C++. New features like constant type, virtual function, operator overloading, type-safe free-store memory allocation, comments with double slashes (//) were included. A standalone compiler Cfront was also developed.
As there was no official standard therefore in 1985 a first edition of C++ book The C++ Programming Language was published. C++ 2.0 was released in 1989 and second edition of the book was also released in 1991. In C++ 2.0 many new features like const member functions, static member functions, protected members, abstract classes and multiple inheritance. From 1990 to 2011 it evolved very slowly and C++11.0 was released in 2011. Many new features like new casts, boolean type , exceptions, templates, and namespaces were evolved. The standard library was enlarged. In 2014 C++14 has been released with minor changes.
C++ Advantages
The C++ programming laguage gives following advanatges over C.
- In C++, creating and using new data types is easier as compared to C language.
- The program developing time has become lower as compared to the C because old codes can be reused in C++.
- The C++ codes are less bug-prone than C due to strict syntax and type checking strategy.
- The memory management under C++ is more transparent and easier.
- The usage of data in once part of the program cannot access other program parts that is called data hiding in C++.
* with the evaluation of Java, C#, Matalb and many other higher level languages, C++ is now being grouped in mid-level programming language.