C++

C++ is a general-purpose programming language, that combines features of both high level languages - allowing powerful information management, and low level languages - permitting great control over the details of the program execution and operations.

It has no memory management, which can be a disadvantage for novice programmers, but problems can easily be avoided and/or detected.

Advantages

Allows high level abstractions, such as Object Oriented Programming
Very high execution performance, rivaled only by assembly language
Very low resource usage
Can access virtually any software and hardware components
Allows the use of template functions and template classes (solved at compile-time, no performance penalty is induced)

Disadvantages

Low level capabilities often result in unintended programming errors
More difficult to maintain due to source code organization (headers/source)

Components

Standard C++ Library (headers without an extension: iostream, fstream, algorithm, vector etc.)
Standard C Library (headers ending in .h: stdio.h, stdlib.h, math.h, time.h etc.)

Development tools

Microsoft Visual Studio
CodeBlocks
Eclipse
NetBeans
other

Most IDEs can be configured to use any compiler with a bit of extra work, the most common ones being the Visual C++ compiler, MingW, LLVM and GCC. Or, if you feel like an IDE is slowing you down, simply use a text editor and your favorite compiler :)

Versions

C++98 (ISO/IEC 14882:1998)
C++03 (ISO/IEC 14882:2003)
C++07/TR1 (ISO/IEC TR 19768:2007)
C++11 (ISO/IEC 14882:2011)
C++14 (ISO/IEC 14882:2014)