C++ is an object-oriented programming language that was created as an extension of C by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 at Bell Labs. It supports concepts like inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation. C++ is a systems programming language that is commonly used to develop applications that require high performance or require low-level access to hardware. Some key features of C++ include object-oriented programming, functions, arrays, pointers, strings, file handling, and inheritance. C++ allows programmers to write code that is very close to the underlying hardware and has performance advantages over other languages.