Characteristics of the C++ Programming Language

C++ is a superset of the C programming language. C itself is a descendant of several generations of early languages; it was created and implemented with conflicting goals in mind. This is why C++ contains features that are inconsistent and sometimes irritating. In this section, I will briefly review the major characteristics of C and then will show how C++ uses this "inheritance" to achieve its goals.

C Objectives: Performance, Readability, Beauty, and Portability

The first goal of C was to give software developers a performance-oriented systems programming language. This is why C and C++ do not support run-time checking for errors that could cause incorrect program behavior but could be found ...

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