Beginning Adobe® AIR™: Building Applications for the Adobe Integrated Runtime

2.5. Traditional Desktop Applications

Desktop applications have been in the hands of the general public for as long as the personal computer has been around. Many of the technologies used to build these applications have been dependent on the computer's operating system or must be compiled to run on a specific operating system. Java and the Java Virtual Machine have crossed some of these boundaries by providing a runtime to interpret the application byte code to run on multiple operating systems including Linux, Windows, and OSX.

2.5.1. C

Bell Telephone Laboratories developed C in 1972. C is a procedural-based programming language that was originally developed for the Unix operating system. It has been used extensively in desktop application development and is the predecessor to C++. C is written as a human-readable language comprised of structures. It must be compiled to byte code and can be compiled to run on multiple platforms. C is a weakly typed language as opposed to C++ and Java, which are strongly typed and will throw more compiler errors due to typing issues.

2.5.2. C++

C++ is a separate language from C but built upon the concepts of C. C++ was originally called C with Classes as it was an upgrade to C with the addition of classes. C++ is a strongly typed language and is an Object Oriented (OO) language. OO means that C++ supports polymorphism and inheritance. C++ allows developers to write classes containing methods, properties, and so forth. C++ is ideal for larger ...