C was the C++ predecessor. As it's name implies, a lot of C remains in C++. Although not actually being more powerful than C, C++ allows the programmer to more easily manage and operate with Objects, using an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) concept. C++ allows the programmer to create classes, which are somewhat similar to C structures. However, to a class can be assigned methods, functions associated to it, of various prototypes, which can access and operate within the class, somewhat like C functions often operate on a supplied handler pointer. Although it is possible to implement anything which C++ could implement in C, C++ aids to standardize a way in which objects are created and managed, whereas the C programmer who implements the same system has a lot of liberty on how to actually implement the internals, and style among programmers will vary a lot on the design choices made. In C, some will prefer the handler-type, where a main function initializes a handler, and that handler can be supplied to other functions of the library as an object to operate on/through. Others will even want to have that handler link all the related function pointers within it which then must be called using a convention closer to C++. To finish this discussion, C++ applications are generally slower at runtime, and are much slower to compile than C programs. The low-level infrastructure for C++ binary execution is also larger. For these reasons C is always commonly used even if C++ has a lot of popularity, and will probably continue to be used in projects where size and speed are primary concerns, and portable code still required (assembly would be unsuitable then).