C++ is essentially an object-oriented extension to C. It was developed by Stroustrup in the early 1980s. The first commercial version was introduced in 1985. The language uses the SIMULA class construct to provide for data abstraction and information hiding, and also supports class inheritance. Various changes have been made to the language since its inception. Current versions have the ANSI Standard C as a subset. Consequently programs written in ANSI C can be compiled on C++ compilers. A further feature of C++ (over C) is that the type checking is much stricter.
The biggest disadvantage of C++ is that it is not an easy language to learn a ordinary C must first be mastered.
C++ is the most widely used of the object-oriented languages (although some practitioners claim that it is not a true OOP language).
Created and maintained by Frans Coenen. Last updated 03 July 2001