Introduction
Terms such as ‘‘the Internet,’’ which were unfamiliar just 20 years ago are now common.
Students in elementary school regularly ‘‘surf’’ the Internet and use computers to design and
implementtheirclassroomprojects.ManypeopleusetheInternettolookforinformationand
to communicate with others. This is all made possible by the use of various software, also
known as computer programs. Without software, a computer cannot work. Software is
developed by using programming languages. C++ is one of the programming languages,
which is well suited for developing software to accomplish specific tasks. The main objective
of this book is to help you learn C++ programming language to write programs. Before you
begin programming, it is useful to understand some of the basic terminology and different
components of a computer. We begin with an overview of the history of computers.
