If you stumbled across this article, you are probably brand new to programming. Congrats! It’s a big and exciting world that is as fulfilling as it is challenging. You have probably also heard about the two coding languages CSS and C++. The big question is, what is the difference between CSS and C++?
While it is natural to mix these two languages up because their names are so similar, they could not be more different!
Don’t worry though, in this article I am going to give you a quick overview of what each language is and how exactly how they are different.
So without further ado, let’s jump into CSS vs C++, what’s the difference?
What is CSS?
CSS is a coding language just like C++. The major difference between CSS and C++ is that CSS is not a programming language. You can’t use CSS to write logical programs. For example, if you wanted to build a simple calculator, you could not do so with CSS but you could very easily do this with C++.
Instead, CSS is one of the three languages used for front-end web development. Which are HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The language is used to style every webpage you have ever seen. Ever.
This includes the article you are reading right now. That’s right! You’re witnessing CSS in action right now.
The font being used on this article, the color of the text, buttons, background, and even the positioning of all of these elements are being set with CSS.
Teaching you CSS is way beyond the scope of this article. However, if you want to learn more about CSS and a bunch of other web development tools and languages, check out my list of free resources here.
here is some example CSS code so you can get an idea of what is looks like. I swear the language is not as scary as it may seem!
body {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
button {
color: red;
background: black;
}
p {
font-size: 16px;
}If you look at the code above, you might be able to piece together what it is doing. Essentially, we are taking different parts of the webpage and declaring different styling to them.
So the body of the document is maintaning a constant width and height of 100%. The buttons are all red with a black background. The paragraphs, labeled “p”, has a font size of 16 pixels.
As you can see, all of these changes do not contain any real logical reasoning. We are simply declaring what we want to see.
If you find this confusing and want to learn more, again, you can check out this resource.
What Is C++?
I’m not going to lie to you, C++ is a much more challenging coding language to understand than CSS. C++, sometimes refered to as Cpp (or “C-plus-plus”) , is one of the oldest programming languages that is still in use today.
C++ is derived from the C programming language. The main difference between these two languages is that C++ was built with something called object-oriented programming in mind. This distinction isn’t important for now, but it’s good to take note of.
C++ is used for everything from game programming, software engineering, data structures, developing browsers, operating systems, applications, and more.
There are a ton of applications for C++ in 2022.
That being said, C++ has slowly been decreasing in popularity every year as languages such as Python, C# and Java are seen as more viable options for development.
The largest benefit of C++ is that programs written in this language tend to be faster than programs written in other languages. This means that if you execute the exact same program in C++ vs another language like Python, the program in C++ will execute faster.
If this is the case, then why is C++ not used over these other languages? Well, mainly because it’s a much harder language to use and can result in more bugs and that requires the necessity for more talented developers who are knowledgable in the language.
Here is a simple calculator app written in C++ from Programiz.
# include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
char op;
float num1, num2;
cout << "Enter operator: +, -, *, /: ";
cin >> op;
cout << "Enter two operands: ";
cin >> num1 >> num2;
switch(op) {
case '+':
cout << num1 << " + " << num2 << " = " << num1 + num2;
break;
case '-':
cout << num1 << " - " << num2 << " = " << num1 - num2;
break;
case '*':
cout << num1 << " * " << num2 << " = " << num1 * num2;
break;
case '/':
cout << num1 << " / " << num2 << " = " << num1 / num2;
break;
default:
// If the operator is other than +, -, * or /, error message is shown
cout << "Error! operator is not correct";
break;
}
return 0;
}Output:
Enter operator: +, -, *, /: -
Enter two operands: 3.4 8.4
3.4 - 8.4 = -5Hopefully you can get a basic understanding of how this code works. If not, it is definitely beyond the scope of this article!
C++ is a great language to learn. It will teach you many of the programming concepts you need to know to be a great developer and kickstart your career. If you’re interested, you can look through a bunch of great courses here.
The Difference Between CSS vs C++?
So to clarify, the main difference between CSS and C++ is this. CSS is a coding language used to style and design webpages. The language is used in conjunction with HTML and JavaScript for frontend web development. In contrast, C++ is a programming language that can be used for a wide range of progamming projects. Such as game development, software engineering, data structures, developing browsers, operating systems, applications, and more!
Ultimately, it’s hard to paint a full picture of both these languages in a short article, but the most important thing to note is that although both languages sound similar, they have absolutely nothing in common!
Wrapping Up
So that’s about it! The difference between CSS vs C++. Hopefully this article helped clear up some confusion about the two languages.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of programming languages there are and which to learn, don’t worry. There are really only around 10 languages that are actually used commonly in the industry. This guy does a good job of summing up most of the important ones.
