Science & technology

Creation of C++

1983

C++ is a general-purpose programming language created by the Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs as an extension of C. He began the work in 1979 under the name C with Classes, adding object-oriented features from the language Simula, and renamed it C++ in 1983, the plus signs referring to the increment operator of C. The first commercial release appeared in 1985, together with his book The C++ Programming Language, and it was standardised by the International Organization for Standardization in 1998. Later additions included templates, a large standard library and many modern features. C++ is valued for its speed and control over hardware, and it is used in operating systems, games, web browsers and financial software.

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