C / C++: Systems Programming Languages Timeline

C / C++: Systems Programming Languages 19

1972 Dennis Ritchie creates the C language at Bell Labs C evolves from the B language to support Unix development Working at Bell Labs, Dennis Ritchie developed C as a typed successor to Ken Thompson's B language. The language was designed for writing system software on the PDP-11.
1973 Unix kernel rewritten in C An operating system written in a high-level language In 1973 the Unix kernel was rewritten in C, which made it far easier to port to other hardware. This tied the fortunes of C and Unix together.
1978 Kernighan and Ritchie publish The C Programming Language The book known as K&R becomes the de facto C specification Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book served as the informal definition of C for a decade. The dialect it describes is known as K&R C.
1979 Bjarne Stroustrup begins work on C with Classes Adding Simula-style classes to C at Bell Labs Bjarne Stroustrup began extending C with classes in 1979, drawing on his experience with Simula. This was the origin of C++.
1983 C with Classes is renamed C++ The new name reflects the C increment operator In 1983 the language was renamed C++, a reference to the ++ increment operator in C. Features such as virtual functions and operator overloading were added around this time.
1985 The C++ Programming Language first edition and commercial C++ release Stroustrup's book and Cfront 1.0 bring C++ to the public In 1985 Bjarne Stroustrup published the first edition of The C++ Programming Language, and the first commercial release of C++ followed. The book served as the language's definition until standardisation.
1987 First release of the GNU C Compiler Richard Stallman releases GCC as free software Richard Stallman released the first version of GCC in 1987 as the GNU Project's free C compiler. It became one of the most widely used compilers and was later extended to C++ and other languages.
1989 ANSI ratifies the first C standard ANSI X3.159-1989 standardises the C language The American National Standards Institute approved the first formal C standard in December 1989. It is commonly called ANSI C or C89.
1990 ISO adopts the C standard as C90 ISO/IEC 9899:1990 makes C an international standard In 1990 the International Organization for Standardization adopted the ANSI C standard as an international one. The result is known as C90.
1994 Alexander Stepanov's STL is adopted into the C++ draft standard Generic programming enters the C++ standard library In 1994 the C++ standards committee voted to include the Standard Template Library, designed by Alexander Stepanov and Meng Lee, in the draft standard. It established containers, iterators and algorithms as core parts of C++.
1998 ISO publishes the first C++ standard, C++98 ISO/IEC 14882:1998 standardises C++ The first international standard for C++ was published in 1998. It included templates, exceptions and the Standard Template Library.
1999 C99 standard is published ISO/IEC 9899:1999 revises the C language C99 added inline functions, variable-length arrays, the long long type, designated initializers and // comments to the C language.
2011 C++11 standard is approved The largest revision of C++ since its first standard ISO approved C++11 on 12 August 2011. It introduced move semantics, lambda expressions, auto, smart pointers and a standard threading library, and is the start of what is called modern C++.
2011 Dennis Ritchie, creator of C, dies The co-creator of C and Unix dies aged 70 Dennis Ritchie died in October 2011 at the age of 70. He had created C and co-created Unix, and received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1999.
2014 C++14 is published A refinement release of C++11 C++14 was published in December 2014. It refined C++11 with generic lambdas, return type deduction and other smaller improvements.
2017 C++17 is published Adds structured bindings, std::optional and parallel algorithms C++17 was published in December 2017. It added structured bindings, std::optional, std::variant, std::filesystem and parallel algorithms.
2020 C++20 is published Concepts, modules, ranges and coroutines arrive C++20 was published in December 2020. It introduced concepts, modules, ranges, coroutines and the three-way comparison operator.
2024 White House report urges a move to memory-safe languages The Office of the National Cyber Director cites C and C++ memory-safety risks In February 2024 the US Office of the National Cyber Director issued a report encouraging adoption of memory-safe programming languages. The report prompted renewed debate about the future of C and C++ and about safety profiles for C++.
2024 C23 is published as ISO/IEC 9899:2024 The latest revision of the C standard C23 was published by ISO in October 2024. It adds the nullptr constant, the bool, true and false keywords, the #embed directive and the typeof operator.