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Origins of C++ What are C++ and OOP? C++ is an advanced, high-level programming language (Computer languages) that is used to develop powerful applications for Microsoft Windows, many Linux environments, and other well-known and widely used operating systems. C++ is quickly becoming the standard language for commercial software development (Outline). OOP, an abbreviation for object-oriented programming is simply code that attempts to place a new layer of abstraction between the programmer and the data he is working with this layer will help the programmer develop better code more quickly than he could do before. (McHale). OOP languages must include four fundamental concepts before it may reasonably be defined as object-oriented (O-O): encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance and the ability to be dynamic (McHale). Where did C++ come from?
C++ was designed and implemented by Bjarne Stroustrup who works for AT&T Bell Labs as head of the Large-Scale Program Research department where he is heavily involved with the evolution of his product (Duffy, 98). His development, originally called C with classes was a marriage between a language called Simula 67 with object-orientated features and C, which was powerful and efficient in its design. Fortran John Backus at IBM developed Fortran in 1956. Fortran, an abbreviation and acronym for FORmula TRANslation system, is generally considered to be the first high-level programming language. Fortran is, even today, a language of choice among programmers, its latest release, Fortran 90, in 1990. Early versions of this language would be largely criticized today [there were a few problems like the program layout, which had to obey certain criteria like an 80 character maximum line (the length of a punch card on which the programs were often written) (Parsons) and the first six columns were reserved for labels and comments, denoted by the keyword C]; however, this language influenced every language used today in the programming community in some way.
A sample Fortran program would look like this (the digits 1, 2, and 3 in this program are labels and. GT. signifies a comparison checking to see if the variable, H, is Greater Than 5): C EXAMPLE FORTRAN CODE DIMENSION A (5), B (5, 2) INTEGER H DO 1 I = 1, 5 1 A (I) = 6 - I H = 1 3 IF (H. GT. 5) GO TO 2 B (H, 1) = 1 B (H, 2) = 5 + 3 (H - A (H) ) H = H + 1 GO TO 3 2 STOP END (Parsons) ALGOL Algol, short for ALGOrithmic Language, is perhaps the most influential programming language ever created. The first implementation arose in 1958 and quickly became the standard for expressing algorithms.
Algol was most widely used in the academic community, which thusly led to its widespread usage. P: begin integer h, i; real array A[ 1: 5 ], B[ 1: 5, 1: 2 ]; for i: = 1 step 1 until 5 do A[I]: = 6 - i; h: = 1 Loop: if h < = 5 then begin B[h, 1 ]: = 1; B[h, 2 ]: = 5 + 3 (h - A[h]); h: = h + 1; go to Loop end end P (Parsons) The similarity between such modern languages as Pascal and Modula- 2 and Algol proves it influential to the programming community, even today. Algol also introduced the concept of free-format, a concept that allows programmers to arrange the code any way they want (assuming the syntax is correct) (Parsons). This concept proves itself useful today in making source code easier to read and eliminating the problem of spaghetti code (code written in an unreadable fashion, or strung together as spaghetti is).
Simula 67 Simula 67 was developed by the Norwegian armed forces (Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl at the Norwegian Computer Center) and was the first of its kind to use classes (as class is defined by a program unit containing both data and associated functions) (Overland, 3). Its development was initiated between 1961 and 1967. SIMULA I, appearing first in 1964, was designed as a system simulation and modeling language. It would consider each part of a system as a separate entity and allowed for interaction between separate entities. This language was based upon Algol and shares Algol's free-format syntax (Parsons). Stroustrup considered Simula 67 the first real object-oriented programming language but felt that it was too slow (Duffy, 98).
Simula 67 s source looks similar to that of C, a sample program looks like: system Airport Departure: = arrivals, counter, fee collector, control, lobby; customer passenger (fee paid) [ 500 ]; Boolean fee paid; : : station counter; begin accept (passenger) select; (first) if none: (exit); hold (normal (2, 0. 2) ); route (passenger) to: (if fee paid then control else fee controller) end: : (Parsons) C C, a language developed by Bell Labs to write operating systems (Stroustrup), was not designed to be object-oriented (McHale). Though it is possible to add object-oriented design to C programs, the implementation is hard and C was originally intended to be a flexible language that would be adaptable to a wide range of systems (McHale). C was chosen as the base language for C++ because it is versatile, terse, and relatively low-level; is adequate for most systems programming tasks; runs everywhere on everything; and fits into the UNIX programming environment (Stroustrup, 15). Stroustrup began C++ in 1978 as a project writing a simulator for described computer systems for his Ph. D. at the Computing Laboratory at Cambridge.
He believed that Simula 67 s use of classes was a perfect description of networked machines. His only problem with Simula 67 was that it was too slow for the large-scale systems programming with which he was involved. Hence, C++ was born: a C language with classes and Simula 67 s stronger sense of data types. His language, though still quite similar to his original idea, has been through quite a few changes before being standardized (Overland, 3) by the International Standards Organization (ISO), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the British Standards Institute (BSI), and the Deutsches Institut fr Norman (DIN, or the German national standards organization) (Stroustrup).
Other Influences Ada and Clu were major inspirations for C++ templates; its exception handling mechanisms were also profoundly influenced by Ada and Clu as well as the programming language, ML. Ada was a project started in 1975 by the US DoD (United Stated Department of Defense) and was used for implementing systems ordered by the DoD. The language was formalized officially near the end of 1980 and is currently used by NATO and the US DoD for implementation projects for implementation projects. The latest implementation, Ada 95 (released in 1995) supports object orientation.
Ada was named for Ada, Countess of Lovelace, who was the first programmer - she programmed Babbages Difference Engine. Barbara Liskov et al at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed Clu in 1974 - 1975. It is an object-oriented language in the Pascal family that is designed to support data abstraction (Johnson) - similar to the language Alphard. Clu, short for CLUster, introduced the concept of the index, or iterator in a for loop (a loop is a procedure that performs a set of tasks while a test returns true) (Johnson). The standardized language of ML is a functional programming language meaning that the full power of mathematical functions is present. ML is an acronym for Meta Language and is significant in that the term meta language is used to describe a language in which others are discussed or analyzed (The Standard ML Programming Language).
The language was originally implemented to find and perform proofs and is prominent in the computer-assisted reasoning programming fields (The Standard ML Programming Language). Early C++ C with Classes, released in 1980, lacked many common modern C++ features such as operator overloading [overloading means reusing a name, Operator overloading allows you to create types that look like true extensions to the C++ language (Overland, 13) ], references [an operator indicating that one variable is to be used in reference or as an alias for another variable (Overland, 142) ], virtual functions [a virtual function is a function whos address is not fixed until run-time (Overland, 536). This means that it does not take memory until it is needed, this is useful for things like pop-up messages in Windows, for example (Overland, 537) ], templates [a C++ technique for generating type and function code - this essentially means you only have to write declarations for link-listed code one time (Overland, 507) ], exceptions (errors in the program), and many other details. Many revisions and additions were added - specifically the ones abovementioned before C++ was made commercial - before it was standardized.
C++ was first used commercially sometime in July of 1983 (Stroustrup, 10). Why was C++ written? C++ was written to be a simple programming language keeping compatibility with C. Stroustrup's primary reasons being So that my friends and I would not have to program in assembler, C, or various modern high-level languages Its main purpose was to make writing good programs easier and more pleasant for the individual programmer It was originally invented because I wanted to write some event driven simulations for which Simula 67 would have been ideal, except for efficiency considerations. (10 - 11) Why is it called C++? Rick Mascitti coined the name C++ in the summer of 1983. This name is in reference to the evolutionary nature of the changes from C.
The ++ is an operator in both C and C++; it is the increment operator (Stroustrup, 10) (i. e. if you have an integer i and you wanted to add 1 to its value, you could say i++; ). The name is not C+ as it is both a syntax error in the language of C and is the name of a completely unrelated language [there were at last count around 4000 different languages (Parsons) ]. The ++ operator can also be used before the integer (++i...
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Research essay sample on Object Oriented Programming Programming Language
