C, C++ and Java

C The C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories. C was implement- ed in 1972. C initially became known as the development language of the UNIX operating system. Today, virtually all new major operating systems are written in C and/or C++.

C++ Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++, an extension of C, in the early 1980s. C++ provides a number of features that “spruce up” the C language, but more importantly, it provides ca- pabilities for object-oriented programming. C++ is a hybrid language: It is possible to pro- gram in either a C-like style (procedural programming), in which the focus is on actions, or an object-oriented style, in which the focus is on objects, or both. C and C++ have in- fluenced many subsequent programming languages, such as Java, C#, JavaScript and PHP, each of which has a syntax similar to C and C++.

Java Microprocessors are having a profound impact in intelligent consumer electronic devices. Recognizing this, Sun Microsystems in 1991 funded an internal corporate research project code-named Green to provide software for these devices. The project resulted in the de- velopment of a C++-based language that its creator, James Gosling, called Oak after an oak tree outside his window at Sun. It was later discovered that there already was a computer language called Oak. When a group of Sun people visited a local coffee shop, the name Java was suggested and it stuck.

The Green project ran into some difficulties. The marketplace for intelligent con- sumer electronic devices did not develop in the early 1990s as quickly as Sun had antici- pated. The project was in danger of being canceled. By sheer good fortune, the World Wide Web exploded in popularity in 1993, and Sun saw the immediate potential of using Java to add dynamic content (e.g., interactivity, animations and the like) to web pages. This breathed new life into the project.

Sun formally announced Java at an industry conference in May 1995. Java garnered the attention of the business community because of the phenomenal interest in the web. Java is now used to develop large-scale enterprise applications, to enhance the function- ality of web servers (the computers that provide the content we see in our web browsers), to provide applications for consumer devices (e.g., cell phones, pagers and personal digital assistants) and for many other purposes.