History of C and C++

Java evolved from C++, which evolved from C, which evolved from BCPL and B. BCPL was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards as a language for writing operating systems software and compilers. Ken Thompson modeled many features in his language B after their counterparts in BCPL, using B to create early versions of the UNIX operating system at Bell Laboratories in 1970.

The C language was evolved from B by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories and was originally implemented in 1972. It initially became widely known as the development language of the UNIX operating system. Today, most of the code for general-purpose operating systems (e.g., those found in laptops, desktops, workstations and small servers) is written in C or C++.

C++, an extension of C, was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the early 1980s at Bell Laboratories (now part of Lucent). C++ provides a number of features that "spruce up" the C language, but more important, it provides capabilities for object-oriented programming (discussed in more detail in Section 1.16 and throughout this book). C++ is a hybrid languageit is possible to program in either a C-like style, an object-oriented style or both.

A revolution is brewing in the software community. Building software quickly, correctly and economically remains an elusive goal at a time when demands for new and more powerful software are soaring. Objects, or more preciselyas we will see in Section 1.16the classes objects come from, are essentially reusable software components. There are date objects, time objects, audio objects, automobile objects, people objects and so on. In fact, almost any noun can be represented as a software object in terms of attributes (e.g., name, color and size) and behaviors (e.g., calculating, moving and communicating). Software developers are discovering that using a modular, object-oriented design and implementation approach can make software-development groups much more productive than was possible with earlier popular programming techniques like structured programming. Object-oriented programs are often easier to understand, correct and modify. Java is the world's most widely used object-oriented programming language.