C and C++ are among the most popular programming languages used for developing system applications, games, operating systems, etc. Both sound similar but have differences in terms of the features that they provide.
In this article, I will discuss the similarities and differences between C and C++ programming languages.
What is C programming language?
C is a general-purpose, structural, or procedure-oriented computer programming language. It was developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories.
C is a machine-independent language which means code written on one machine can run on another with some minor machine-specific changes if required. The development of many other modern programming languages is inspired by C which includes C++, Java, etc.
MS Windows, Linux Kernel, Oracle database, Git, and Python interpreter are some examples of applications that are developed using the C programming language.
What is C++ programming language?
C++ is considered an extension of the C programming language, sometimes it is called C with classes. It is a high-level, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the 1980s.
It is used for developing complex high-performance applications. It is used in the development of some well-known applications like youtube, Windows OS, Mozilla Firefox, MySQL, etc.
Similarities between C and C++ programming languages
The similarities between C and C++ are –
- Both have the same basic syntax
- Nearly all the operators and keywords of C are present in C++ and they have the same function
- Compilation and execution of the program are similar
- The basic memory model of both the languages is very close to the hardware
- Both languages have the same notions of the stack, heap, file-scope, and static variables
- Both languages are used in developing high-performance real-time applications
C vs C++ : The key differences
The key differences between C and C++ are given in the below table.
Conclusion
We hope this article is useful to you and you understood the differences between C and C++ programming languages.
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