Introduction to C++

History

Bjarne Stroustrup began developing C++ in 1979 at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, as an upgrade to the C language. It was originally known as C with Classes until being renamed C++ in 1983.

The ISO committee standardised C++ in 1998 (this implies that the ISO standards committee accepted a document detailing the C++ language in order to assure that all compilers follow the same set of standards). In 2003, a minor update to the language (dubbed C++03) was introduced.

Since then, four major upgrades to the C++ language have been released (C++11, C++14, C++17, and C++20), each of which has added new capabilities. C++11, in particular, added a large number of new features and is commonly regarded as the language’s new basic version. The language will be upgraded every three years or so in the future, with the feature list for C++23 currently being established.

What is C++ Programming Language ?

C++ is a statically typed, compiled programming language that supports procedural, object-oriented, and generic programming. C++ is classified as a middle-level language since it combines high-level and low-level language capabilities.

C++ is a superset of C, which means that practically any legal C program may be converted to a legal C++ program.

Advantages of C++

• C++ is a Object-oriented programming language
  • Using objects in C++, you may break down large problems into smaller chunks.
• Natively compiled and speed
  • The performance of optimised C++ programmes is comparable to that of C programming. The code is directly compiled to the native code.
• General Purpose Language
  • Because of its performance, C++ is used to create games, desktop programmes, operating systems, browsers, and other software.
• Portability
  • C++ has a feature called portability, or platform independence, which allows users to run the same programme on a variety of operating systems and interfaces.
• Developer Community Support
  • C++ has a big community that promotes it by offering both paid and unpaid online courses and lectures. C++ is the 6th most popular and followed tag on StackOverflow and GitHub, according to statistics.
• Multiple-paradigm
  • Learning other programming languages such as Java, C#, and others will be lot easier after learning C++.

Use case for C++

• You can use C++ to develop various types of applications that includes
  • Console Applications
  • Games
  • Real-time applications
  • Graphics based applications
  • AI and neural networks
  • Compilers
  • Operating System

Resources to Learn C++

• C++ Standard Library and References
• Developer Communities like StackOverflow and CodeChef