The History of C++

The story of C++ begins in 1979, when a researcher named Bjarne Stroustrup started working at Bell Labs. He loved the C programming language for how fast and close-to-the-hardware it was, but he also missed the organizational tools of another language he had used, called Simula, which introduced the idea of "classes" and objects.

Stroustrup began adding class-based, object-oriented features on top of C, and originally called his creation "C with Classes". In 1983, the language was renamed "C++" — a playful programmer joke, since "++" is the increment operator in C, meaning "add one". C++ is, quite literally, "one better than C".

What was C++ originally called before it got its current name?

C++ was created by ____ at Bell Labs.

C++ has been continuously standardized since 1998 (a version nicknamed "C++98") by an international committee, so that every compiler maker agrees on the same rules. Major updates followed roughly every few years — C++11 in particular added many modern conveniences, and the committee has kept releasing new versions since, including C++14, C++17, C++20, and C++23.

The "++" in C++ refers to the increment operator, which means "add one".

Despite being decades old, C++ is still actively maintained and improved today. Because so much critical software was written in it, and because it remains one of the fastest languages available, C++ has never gone out of style — it just keeps evolving.