Introduction to C Language

Overview

The C Language is a standard computer programming language. C is a successor of the B language which was introduced in early 1970 by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.

C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie to program the Unix operating system at AT&T Bell Labs. C is one of the most widely used programming languages. C is a very popular language from which many other languages are derived.

Features

Some of the C language features are as follows:

C was originally created for operating system programming like Unix. However, it has evolved into a general-purpose programming language.
C is a medium-level language, efficient, and popular for writing system software.
C is a cross-platform programming language. It is available on a wide variety of platforms. Most machine architectures support a C compiler.
It is also commonly used in computer science education for teaching programming basics in schools. colleges and universities.

Uses of C

C was initially used for system development and Operating system programs. C produces code that runs nearly as fast as code written in assembly language.

C was adopted as a system development language. Some examples of the use of C language are as follows:

Operating Systems
Language Compilers
Language Interpreters
Assemblers
Text Editors
System Drivers
System Utilities

Getting Started

To get started with C language programming download and install an IDE.

IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. IDE software provides a variety of tools to assist C programmers to enhance productivity. They combine the language tools like compiler, linker, and loader.

IDE also provides a visual source code editor with source code syntax color highlighting, auto-completion of code, Debugger, etc. Most of the tutorials on this website use Code::Blocks IDE. Code::Blocks is an open-source, cross-platform IDE.

Download & Install Code::Blocks on Windows