C++ History

C++ is a language wit a long history. It was first created by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 when he started work on “C with Classes”. He was inspired by Simula which was used in large software development. However, it was too slow for practical use.

“C with Classes” included features like classes, derived classes, strong type checking, inlining, default arguments, and argument type checking.

In 1982 he started work on a C successor and it was also then it was renamed to C++.

In 1985 the first edition of “The C++ Programming Language” was published. It was the first book to describe the C++ language. The first compiler was release in october the same year.

In 1989 C++ 2.0 was released. It was a minor revision of the language. An update of the “The C++ Programming Language” book was also released. This version included features like multiple inheritance, abstract classes, static member functions, const member functions, and protected members.

In 1998 C++98 was released, which also standardized the language.

After this the language was standardized every three years. Currently released standards include C++03, C++11, C++14, and C++17, C++20 and C++23.

In this book we will be primarily be focusing on C++23.

For more information see Wikipedia or Bjarne Stroustrup’s homepage.