Why is C plus plus such a robust programming language?

Answer 1

Borland's implementation of C++ was never regarded as The Bible of Computer Programming (whatever that means). If it were we'd probably still be using it today, but it was rendered obsolete in 1997 when Borland C++ Builder superseded it.

Answer 2

C++ is more robust than C because it takes advantage of the object-oriented programming principals of encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance and polymorphism.

Encapsulation is the main advantage in that all of the data and the methods that apply to that data are encapsulated by a self-contained entity known as an object. Encapsulation allows consumers of the object to refer to, copy and manipulate the data in a highly consistent manner, because everything is kept in just one place.

Abstraction is the principal that it is not necessary to know how an object works in order to use it. That is, when a consumer refers to an object's data, such as a int value, then as far as the consumer is concerned that int is a data member of the object. But the object may not actually store that int internally: it may be generated from other internal data; or the object might store the int as a double, or some other datatype. The point is that the consumer doesn't need to know how that int was generated or stored, only that it can be accessed in a consistent manner. Abstraction if often incorrectly known as information hiding or data hiding, however you cannot physically hide information within an object in C++, you can only limit access to that information, which is not the same thing. Information hiding is actually a function of binary libraries, where the implementation details are obfuscated.

Inheritance is the means by which new classes can be derived from existing classes (base classes), where the derived classes need only cater for the differences rather than provide a complete implementation (resulting in code duplication and increased maintenance). In other words, derived classes are more specialised versions of their base classes.

Polymorphism is the means by which objects behave according to their actual type even when referring to them by their generic type. That is, if you have circle and square classes that are both derived from a generic shape class, then circles and squares are said to be a type of shape (they have an is-a relationship with shape). The shape class can then provide a generic interface that is common to all types of shape, thus if you call shape::draw(), a circle will behave as if you'd called circle::draw(), whether you knew the shape was a circle or not. The point is you don't need to know the actual type, because polymorphism ensures the object behaves according to its actual type; the object "does the right thing" automatically. In other words, you do not need to know the runtime type of an object, you can simply refer to it by its generic type.