Over the decades, C++ has evolved from a few key ideas to a comprehensive set of facilities supported by multiple compilers, tools for a wide range of uses, and thousands of libraries. It is available on essentially all platforms and used in essentially every country and industry. What are the key ideas and design principles sustaining C++? How did the original ideas evolve and survive 40 years of development and 30 years of attention from a 300+ member standards committee? The current ISO standard, C++20, offers major new features (such as modules, concepts, coroutines) and improved support for compile-time programming and concurrency.