Simula

Simula is a name for two simulation programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Syntactically, it is a fairly faithful superset of ALGOL 60.

Simula 67 introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods, coroutines, discrete event simulation, and features garbage collection.

Simula is considered the first object-oriented programming language. As its name implies, Simula was designed for doing simulations, and the needs of that domain provided the framework for many of the features of object-oriented languages today.

Simula has been used in a wide range of applications such as simulating VLSI designs, process modeling, protocols, algorithms, and other applications such as typesetting, computer graphics, and education. The influence of Simula is often understated, and Simula-type objects are reimplemented in C++, Java and C#. The creator of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup, has acknowledged that Simula 67 was the greatest influence on him to develop C++, to bring the kind of productivity enhancements offered by Simula to the raw computational speed offered by lower level languages like BCPL.