C++ beginner's question

Two Questions:

-What is C++?
-How is C++ different from HTML, Java, MySQL or is it?

Shadow

 

In simple terms, C++ is an object oriented version of the C programming language. You can find a very nice brief history of C++ at http://www.cplusplus.com/info/history.html.

C++ is a programming language and like other languages, has its strengths, weaknesses, supporters and detractors. C++ is very general purpose in that it can be used to write a wide variety of applications for almost any platform. HTML and MySQL have very specific purposes and in fact, I would classify MySQL as an RDBMS (relational database management system) as oppposed to a programming language, although there is some programming language involved to access the data. C++ is more comparable to Java, another general purpose programming language. The major difference being that C++ is usually compiled into machine code for faster execution while Java is an interpreted language. Of course in the world of faster and faster hardware, the speed difference between compiled language and interpreted language is getting negligble.

Hope this helps!

Ray