C++: A journey from "C with Classes" to becoming the 3rd most popular language

Editors note: This is a guest post from Geeky Gene

What is C++?

C++ is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language which was designed by Mr. Bjarne Stroustrup, mainly as an extension of C language which was then also known as C with classes and in the later years took the face of C++ as a separate language.

Early History of C++

C++ first appeared 34 years back in 1985 as a more performance-driven, efficient and flexible language.

C++ was no one's idea to make but it just came out as a constant evolution, fixes, and add-ons to the ordinary C language.

Mr. Bjarne actually started working on a concept called, "C with Classes" which was a prior predecessor to C++. 

The idea of creating a new language strikes Stroustrup's mind when he had been going through some programming experiences while completing his Ph. D. thesis.

Later in the year 1983, "C with Classes" was renamed to C++ and was given updates of tons of useful features like - function name, operator overloading, improved type checking, and single-line comments with forward-slash. ( // )

Then in the year 1985, C++ the first edition was released and became an official standard later in October, that year.

In 1989, C++ 2.0 was launched followed by the second update to it in 1991. 

And then it went through some major updates like - multiple inheritances, abstract classes, static member functions, constant member functions, and protected member functions.

Later additional features also gave it - templates, exception handling, namespaces, casts, and a boolean type data. 

After the 2.0 update, C++ bloomed like a programming language and has witnessed very slow evolution since then.

 

Current Status of C++

As of now, C++ is the third most popular programming language after java as 1st and C language on 2nd.

C++ as a language

Although being a separate language in its own but since derived from C, C++ inherits most of the C's syntax. C++ codes are the most compact and efficient and execute very quickly that makes it possibly the fastest programming language.

C++ has a vast heap of libraries, frameworks, and tools that make it very versatile language. C++ also has excellent support for computer graphics, so is quite popular among game developers.

C++ has a very big community and support as it is almost everywhere. It is also evolving to become a better language by each update.

 

Some Popular Applications that are written in C++

Adobe Systems: Most of the major applications of adobe are written in C++.

Mozilla Firefox: The famous internet browser, Firefox is also written in C++.

MySQL: World's most popular open-source database system with over 100 million copies downloaded and distributed in its history is also coded in the same language.

Popular Operating Systems that are written in C++

Windows: Worlds most popular desktop operating system, Windows is also written in C++. Internet Explorer and MS Office is also the part of the same clan.

Apple - OS X: Some parts of the Apple OS X operating system were written in the C++ programming language.

Related:

What is HTML and how long it takes to learn HTML and CSS?

What is C and where it is used? And the History of C. 

- Geeky Gene