programming-for-dummies

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Picking an Operating System
entire programs because that was all they had available. However, as soon as
assembly language appeared, few people wrote entirely in machine language.
Instead, they switched to assembly language because it allows programmers
to write more complicated programs.
In the early days of personal computers, nearly every programmer used
assembly language. One of the first popular word processors, WordStar, even
ran on two different processors — the Zilog Z-80 and the Intel 8088. To run
on these two different processors, the company had to write WordStar in
two completely different assembly languages.
When programs were fairly simple, that could be possible; but as programs
grew in complexity, writing programs entirely in assembly language proved
too cumbersome. That’s when programmers switched to C.
Most operating systems today are written entirely in C for maximum efficiency;
but as programs grow in complexity, C is quickly falling out of favor just as
assembly language and machine language have done before. To maintain
maximum efficiency to deal with growing complexity, most programmers
have now switched to C++.
In the future, the complexity of programs will always make today’s popular
programming language too cumbersome to use tomorrow. So, it’s likely that
today’s popular C++ language will one day become too clumsy to use for writing
programs in the future. If you learn C++ today, plan on adapting and learning a
newer programming language to write more complicated programs in the shortest
amount of time.
The successor to C++ will have to make writing complicated programs easier
than C++ while retaining maximum efficiency. This language of the future will
depend heavily on the operating systems of the future.
Picking an Operating System
In the early days of computers, every computer had its own operating system,
which made writing programs difficult. Not only did you have to learn a specific
programming language, but you also had to learn how to write programs for a
specific operating system.
To avoid this problem, computer companies standardized around a single
operating system. The first standard operating system is CP/M-80, which
later gave way to MS-DOS and finally to Microsoft Windows.
Initially, a single operating system made writing programs easier because
you had to write programs for only one operating system instead of a handful
of operating systems. By focusing on a single operating system, you could