History of C and C++

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C++ evolved from C, which evolved from two previous languages, BCPL and B. BCPL was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards as a language for writing operating-systems software and compilers. Ken Thompson modeled many features in his language B after their counterparts in BCPL and used B to create early versions of the UNIX operating system at Bell Laboratories in 1970 on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 computer.

Both BPCL and B were "typeless" languages every data term occupied one "word" in memory. For example, it was the programmer's responsibility to treat a data item as a whole number or a real number.

The C language was evolved from B by Dennis Ritche at Bell Labratories and was originally implemented on a DEC PDP-11 computer in 1972. C uses many important concepts of BPCL and and B while adding data typing and other features. C initially became widely known as the development languiage of the UNIX operating system. Today, decades, C has become available for most computers. C is hardware independent. With carefuldesign, it is possible to write C programs that are portable to most computers.
By the late 1970s, C had evolved into what is now refferred to as "traditional C", or "Kernighan and Ritchie C." The publication by Pentice Hall in 1978 of Kernighan and ritchie's book, The C Programming Language, brought wide attention to the language.
This publication became one of the most successful computer science book ever. The widespread use of C with various types of computers (sometimes called hardware platforms) let to many variations. These ware similar, but often incompatible. This was a serious problem for programmers who needed to write portable programs that would run on several platforms. It became clear that a standard version of C was needed. In 1983, the X3J11 technical committee on Computers and Information Processing (X3) to "provide an unambiguous and machine-independent definition of the language." In 1989, the standard was approved.

ANSI cooperated with the International Standards Organization(ISO) to standardize C worldwide; the joint sandard document was published in 1990 and is referred tyo as ANSI/ISO 9899:1990. The second editional of Kernighan and Ritchie I published in 1988, reflects this version called ANSI C, a version of the language still used worldwide.

C++, an extension of C, was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the early 1980s at Bell Labratories. C++ provides a number of features provides a number of features that "spruce up" the C language, but more importantly, it provides capabilities for object-oriented programming. C++ was also standardize by the ANSI and ISO committees.