The accepted answer is spot on. The thing is, to write anything of sufficient complexity in C or C++ requires constructing a new language. I mean this in the se

The accepted answer is spot on. The thing is, to write anything of sufficient complexity in C or C++ requires constructing a new language. I mean this in the sense that you see tons of macros in C (look at the Linux source tree for example). C++ allows you to construct a language (operator overloading, etc.) in a cleaner and safer manner (in my opinion). It also has better performance tools like templates and exceptions. On the other hand it's not obvious when a C++ construct incurs run-time overhead and if you have a simple application, it can be easier to use C.