What is C/C++ and why use C/C++?

What is C/C++:

C++ is a modern, high-level programming language leveraged by millions of programmers around the world. It’s one of the most popular languages for writing computer applications.

In the early days of computing, programs were written in machine language, which consists of the primitive instructions that can be executed directly by the machine.

Machine-language programs are difficult to understand, mostly because the structure of machine language reflects the design of the hardware rather than the needs of programmers. In the mid-1950s, a group of programmers under the direction of John

Backus at IBM had an idea that profoundly changed the nature of computing. Would it be possible, they wondered, to write programs that resembled the mathematical formulas they were trying to compute and have the computer itself translate those formulas into machine language? In 1955, this team produced the initial version of Fortran (whose name is an abbreviation of formula translation), which was the first example of a higher level programming language. Since that time, many new programming languages have been invented.

C++ represents the coming together of two branches in the evolution of programming languages. One of its ancestors is a language called C, which was designed at Bell Laboratories by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 and then later revised and standardized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1989. But C++ also descends from another line of languages that have dramatically changed the nature of modern programming.

Why use C/C++:

C /C++ are one of the most widely used third generation programming languages. Its power and flexibility ensure it is still the leading choice for almost all areas of application, especially in the software development environment.

Many applications are written in C or C++, including the compilers for other programming languages. It is the language many operating systems are written in including Unix, DOS and Windows. It continues to adapt to new uses, the latest being Java, which is used for programming Internet applications.

C has many strengths, it is flexible and portable, it can produce fast, compact code, it provides the programmer with objects to create and manipulate complex structures (e.g classes in C++) and low level routines to control hardware (e.g input and output ports and operating system interrupts). It is also one of the few languages to have an international standard, ANSI C.