Introduction to C++

As of now, C++ is one of the world’s most popular programming languages and promptly used by Competitive Programmer. C++ can be found in today’s operating systems, Graphical User Interfaces, embedded systems and more.

What is C++?

C++ is a powerful general-purpose programming language. It can be used to develop operating systems, browsers, games, and so on. C++ supports object-oriented, procedural, and generic programming. This makes C++ powerful as well as flexible.

C++ is a middle-level language, as it encapsulates both high and low level language features.

C++ History

• C++ programming language was developed in 1980 by Bjarne Stroustrup at bell laboratories of AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph), located in U.S.A.
• Bjarne Stroustrup is known as the founder of C++ language.
• It was develop for adding a feature of OOP (Object Oriented Programming) in C without significantly changing the C component.
• C++ programming is “relative” (called a superset) of C, it means any valid C program is also a valid C++ program.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOPs)

C++ supports object-oriented programming, the four major pillar of object-oriented programming (OPPs) used in C++ are:

1. Inheritance
2. Polymorphism
3. Encapsulation
4. Abstraction

C++ Standard Libraries

Standard C++ programming is divided into three important parts:

• The core library includes the data types, variables and literals, etc.
• The standard library includes the set of functions manipulating strings, files, etc.
• The Standard Template Library (STL) includes the set of methods manipulating a data structure.

Application of C++

By the help of C++ programming language, we can develop different types of secured and robust applications:

• Window application
• Client-Server application
• Device drivers
• Embedded firmware etc

C++ Hello World Program

Let’s have look on a simple C++ program to Print “Welcome to C++” on the console.

#include <iostream>  
using namespace std;  
int main() {  
   cout << "Welcome to C++";  
   return 0;  
}