Why C++

• There are many programming languages.
• They are designed for many different purposes
  • C was designed to be a programmers language and to implement software tools
  • Java was designed to be as portable as possible
  • COBOL was designed so non programmers could read the code
  • BASIC was designed to teach people how to program in FORTRAN
  • PASCAL was designed as a teaching programming language
  • ...
• We have selected C++ as our language
  • It supports many different styles of programming
    • We will begin by learning procedural programming.
    • We will then move to object oriented programming.
    • We will not learn the other paradigms C++ supports
  • It is fairly common and popular
    • But that is hard to measure.
  • And if you know C++
    • You know C since C++ is a superset of C.
  • It allows access to low-level programming concepts
    • Pointers, recursion, ...
    • It requires attention to detail
    • And you can get into trouble by doing the wrong thing.
  • C++ is an open, standards based language
    • It is not controlled by a single company
    • It is alive and growing
  • It is the defacto language for systems development
    • But this might be changing, JAVA for mobile apps
• We have found
  • It is better to learn one language well
  • Then pick up other languages
  • This is a natural thing to do.
• Programming languages tend to come and go
  • This page has some interesting historical data.