Introduction to C Programming

C Programming is developed in 1972 by Dennis M. Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories to develop UNIX operating system. It is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language which is most widely used programming language in the world. It is a first and foremost programming languages taught to students for the better understanding of the concepts of programming. The following are some of the key advantages of C programming language.

• C is a structured programming language.
• We could able to write efficient programs using C.
• C is one of the low-level programming languages which handles low-level activities.
• It can be compiled on a variety of computer platforms.
• It is easy to learn programming language.

Interesting Facts about C programming Language

• C was invented to write UNIX operating system.
• C is successor of B Language which was invented in early 1970s.
• The UNIX operating system is completely written in C Language.
• In 1988, American National Standard Institute (ANSI) has formalized C Language.
• In current days, C is one of the most popular System Programming Language.
• It is written in Assembly Language.
• Most Linux OS, PHP and MySQL  have been written in C Language.

Uses of C Programming Language

C was used to develop many system applications such as:

• Operating Systems
• Database Systems
• Network Drivers
• Compilers and Assemblers
• Language Interpreters
• Word Processors

Features of C Programming Language

The following are the interesting features of C Language:

• C programs are efficient and fast.
• C is a robust language with a rich set of built-in functions and operators.
• C programs are easily extensible.
• C has a collection of C library functions (anyone can add their own function and add it in C Library).
• C is a highly portable programming language which means it can be written on one machine and can be run in other machine with minor or no modifications.

Advantages of C

• C programs are highly portable.
• Built-in standard library functions are very helpful to develop new programs.
• With C, many other programming languages are created. For example C++, Java, Python, Perl, JavaScript, etc.
• In C programming, code debugging, maintenance and testing are easier.
• C is a middle-level programming language which supports both high-level programming as well as low-level programming languages.
• C provides Dynamic Memory Allocation which means you are free to allocate memory in runtime.

Disadvantages of C

• C not support Object Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts.
• C does not support Run-time Checking which means errors are not detected after each line of code.
• C does not support the concept of namespace which means, we cannot define two variable with the same name in C.
• Lack of Exception Handling in C.
• C provides only Low level of Abstraction which has only minimum data hiding which affects the security of the language.