The programming language that began as Bjarne Stroustrup’s “C with Classes” is C++.
Stroustrup began developing the language at Bell Labs in 1979, initially extending the C language with features inspired partly by Simula, especially classes and object-oriented programming. The early project was called “C with Classes,” reflecting its aim to add abstraction and data organization without abandoning C’s speed and systems-programming capabilities.
The name C++ was adopted in 1983. In C, the ++ operator increments a value, so the name suggests an enhanced or successor version of C. C++ became generally available in 1985, the same year Stroustrup published the first edition of The C++ Programming Language.
C++ is often confused with Objective-C because both extend C, but they followed different paths: Objective-C added Smalltalk-inspired messaging, while C++ developed classes, templates, operator overloading, and other features within a different design tradition. Java and C# were created later and were not the result of the “C with Classes” project.