“C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. Well-written C++ programs are fast and efficient. The language is more flexible than other languages because you can use it to create a wide range of apps—from fun and exciting games, to high-performance scientific software, to device drivers, embedded programs, and Windows client apps. For more than 20 years, C++ has been used to solve problems like these and many others. What you might not know is that an increasing number of C++ programmers have folded up the dowdy C-style programming of yesterday and have donned modern C++ instead.

One of the original requirements for C++ was backward compatibility with the C language. Since then, C++ has evolved through several iterations—C with Classes, then the original C++ language specification, and then the many subsequent enhancements. Because of this heritage, C++ is often referred to as a multi-paradigm programming language. In C++, you can do purely procedural C-style programming that involves raw pointers, arrays, null-terminated character strings, custom data structures, and other features that may enable great performance but can also spawn bugs and complexity. Because C-style programming is fraught with perils like these, one of the founding goals for C++ was to make programs both type-safe and easier to write, extend, and maintain. Early on, C++ embraced programming paradigms such as object-oriented programming. Over the years, features have been added to the language, together with highly-tested standard libraries of data structures and algorithms. It’s these additions that have made the modern C++ style possible…”

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh279654(v=vs.110)