Peculiarities of Computer Programming - Essay Example

C++ is a cross-platform, multi-purpose computer programming language. It was developed around 1983-1985 by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs as part of a Ph.D. thesis that he was working on (Gribble, 2013). C++ is an extension of the C programming language. It is a high-level third-generation programming language that was originally designed for UNIX systems. The term “C++” was coined in 1983.

C is another programming language that was developed by Dennis M. Ritchie in the 1970s at Bell Labs (Codingunit.com, n.d). Bjarne Stroustrup had worked with Simula, the first object-oriented programming language. The idea of creating C++ arose from a need for features that were not possible with other languages at that time. He added object-oriented features borrowed from Simula into C to create a new programming language that was fast, efficient, and easier to design. C++ is currently used in desktop applications, telecommunication systems, data analysis, simulation, manufacturing systems, clinical systems, irrigation control systems, web applications, graphics design, desktop, and mobile operating systems amongst other uses (Stroustrup.com, 2015).  

Programming Generation - Third Generation:

Programming Paradigm(s) – Structured programming, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Free-form, Type-checking, statically typed, Data abstraction, Object-oriented (Downey, n.d)

Hello World in C++

The C++ code below prints the words “Hello World!” on the screen when the program is executed.

// Hello World program in C++

#include <iostream>

int main()

{

std::cout << "Hello World!";

}

The first line is a comment line. Double slashes are used to indicate the beginning of a comment. Comment lines are ignored by the compiler.

The second line is a preprocessor directive. Preprocessor directives instruct the compiler to include certain header files that are essential for the program to run.

The third line contains the main function (int main). This is the entry point of a C++ program.

Lines four and six have opening and closing braces. These braces indicate the beginning and end of the int main() function definition. The content inside the braces is the actual code that will be executed when this function is called by the program.

The fifth line is a statement. A statement is any expression that results in the occurrence of an action in the program. The first part of the statement, std::cout, identifies the standard character output device, in this case, the screen. The insertion operator (<<), indicates that the sentence within quotes ("Hello world!"), will be inserted into the standard output. All C++ statements end with a semicolon (Cplusplus.com, n.d).