C++ is an object-oriented programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs as an extension of C. It adds object-oriented features to C and is one of the most popular languages for graphical applications used by companies like Mozilla, Adobe, Google, and others. A basic "Hello World" C++ program is shown that uses cout to print to the console and getch to pause the program. Key elements of C++ code like the main function, preprocessor, data types like int and float, and input/output streams like cout and cin are briefly explained.