Object-Oriented Languages
Languages must support a number of OOP concepts to claim that they are object-oriented languages. Depending upon the features they support, they can be classified into the following two categories:
- Object-based programming languages.
- Object-oriented programming languages.
1. Object-Based Programming:
This is the style of programming that primarily supports encapsulating and identifying the object. The key attributes required for object-based programming are:
- Data encapsulation
- Data hiding and access mechanisms
- Automatic initialization and clear-up of objects
- Operator overloading
Languages that support programming with objects are considered to be object-based programming languages. They do not support inheritance and dynamic binding. Ada is a typical object-based programming language.
2. Object-oriented programming:
It integrates all object-oriented programming functionalities and two additional functionalities, namely inheritance and dynamic linking.
Object Oriented features = object-based features + inheritance + dynamic binding
Languages that support these features include C++, Smalltalk, Object Pascal, and java.
Brief History of C++
C++ is an object-oriented programming language. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrupat AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, in the early 1980s. It supports object-oriented programming features and still retains the power and elegance of C. Therefore, C++ is an extension of C with a major addition to the original C language. C++ is a superset of C. Therefore, almost all C programs are also C++ programs with few minor differences. The most important facilities that C++ adds to C are classes, inheritance, function overloading, and operator overloading. These features enable you to create abstract data types, inherit properties from existing data types, and support polymorphism, then making C++ a truly object-oriented language.