The C Programming Language

Programs that execute operating system or processor related tasks usually need to be written in assembly, since such endeavors are not possible with most high level programming languages. The C language has been developed based on the need to write programs that use machine resources in an easier and more portable way that assembly.

C's popularity stems from the ease with which is adds its power of low level programming with a high level of portability, making its source programs reusable regardless of the architecture used, as long as a compiler is available. C combines the concepts from assembly and high level languages, allowing for program control and the use of data structures in a way similar to other high level languages, while at the same time making it possible to perform tasks usually only accessible to assembly programmers.

These features of the C language are important when choosing a programming language for a new project, as with C programming one can explore hardware resources without much knowledge of the assembly language for the target architecture.

Incorporating concepts from programming languages such as BASIC, FORTRAN and PASCAL, C is derived from ALGOL68, and was designed in 1972 at the Bell Labs by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Richie for the UNIX operating system.

Some features of the C programming language are:

a high degree of portability, allowing for source code to be reused on different architectures without much modification it is a general purpose language, efficient for programming utilities as well as operating systems, word processors, database, and general purpose applications generates compact and fast executable code in comparison to the other compiled languages permits interaction with the operating system and insertion of assembly in the source code it is a structured and modular language and supports the use of modern programming techniques

The C programming language is currently used in the most diverse applications. UNIX compatible operating systems have approximately 90% of their code written in C.