Chapter 1 -- Getting Started -- Welcome to C++! This exciting language, blending the C language with support for object-oriented programming, has become one of the most important programming languages of the 1990s and promises to continue strongly into the 2000s. Its C ancestry brings to C++ the tradition of an efficient , compact, fast, and portable language. Its object- oriented heritage brings C++ a fresh programming methodology designed to cope with escalating complexity of modern programming tasks. Its newly enhanced template features bring yet another new programming methodology, generic programming. This triple heritage is both a blessing and a bane. It makes the language very powerful, but it also means there's more to learn.