Introduction to C++ Language

Introduction to C++ Language

C++ (pronounced as "cee plus plus",) is a general-purpose programming language. It has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing facilities for low-level memory manipulation.

It was designed with a bias toward system programming and embedded, resource-constrained and large systems, with performance, efficiency and flexibility of use as its design highlights. C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications including desktop applications, servers (e.g. e-commerce, web search or SQL servers), and performance-critical applications (e.g. telephone switches or space probes). C++ is acompiled language, with implementations of it available on many platforms and provided by various organizations, including the FSF, LLVM, Microsoft, Intel and IBM.

C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest (and current) standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2014 asISO/IEC 14882:2014 (informally known as C++14).The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by theC++03, ISO/IEC 14882:2003, standard. The current C++14 standard supersedes these andC++11, with new features and an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979, as an extension of the C language as he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C, which also provided high-level features for program organization.

Many other programming languages have been influenced by C++, including C#, Java, and newer versions of C (after 1998).