History of C

Before we can begin to write serious programs in C, it would be interesting to find out what really is C, how it came into existence and how does it compare with other programming languages. In this articles, we would briefly outline these issues.

Four important aspects of any language are—the way it stores data, the way it operates upon this data, how it accomplishes input and output, and how it lets you control the sequence of execution of instructions in a program. We would discuss the first three of these building blocks in this articles.

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What is C?

C is a programming language developed at AT & T's Bell Laboratories of USA in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie. C became popular because it is simple and easy to use. An opinion that is often heard today is—“C has been already superseded by languages like C++, C# and Java, so why bother to learn C today”. I seriously beg to differ with this opinion. There are several reasons for this. These are as follows:

(a) C++, C# or Java make use of a principle called Object Oriented Programming (OOP) to organize programs which offers many advantages. While using this organizing principle, you need basic programming skills. So it makes more sense to first learn C and then migrate to C++, C# or Java. Though this two-step learning process may take more time, but at the end of it, you will definitely find it worth the trouble.

(b) Major parts of popular operating systems like Windows, UNIX, Linux and Android are written in C. Moreover, if one is to extend the operating system to work with new devices, one needs to write device driver programs. These programs are written exclusively in C.

(c) Common consumer devices like microwave ovens, washing machines and digital cameras are getting smarter by the day. This smartness comes from a microprocessor, an operating system and a program embedded in these devices. These programs have to run fast and work in limited amount of memory. C is the language of choice while building such operating systems and programs.

(d) You must have seen several professional 3D computer games where the user navigates some object, like say a spaceship and fires bullets at invaders. The essence of all such games is speed. To match this expectation of speed, the game has to react fast to the user inputs. The popular gaming frameworks (like DirectX) that are used for creating such games are written in C.

I hope that these are very convincing reasons why you should adopt C as the first step in your quest for learning programming.

History of C

“C” seems a strange name for a programming language. But this strange sounding language is one of the most popular computer languages today because it is a structured, high-level, machine independent languages. It allows software developers to develop programs without worrying about the hardware platforms where they will be implemented.

The root of all modern languages is ALGOL, introduced in the early 1960s. ALGOL was the first computer language to use a block structure. Although it never became popular in USA, it was widely used in Europe. ALGOL gave the concept of structured programming to the computer science community. Computer scientists like Corrado Bohm, Guiseppe Jacopini and Edsger Dijksta popularized this concept during 1960s. Subsequently, several languages were announced.

In 1967, Martin Richards developed a language called BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) primarily for writing system software. In 1970, Ken Thompson created a language using many features of BCPL and called it simply B. B was used to create early versions of UNIX operating system at Bell Laboratories. Both BCPL and B were “typeless” system programming languages.

C was evolved from ALGOL, BCPL and B by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories in 1972. C uses many concepts from these languages and added the concept of data types and other powerful features. Since it was developed along with the UNIX operating system at Bell Laboratories. Both BCPL and B were “typeless” system programming languages.

C was evolved from ALGOL, BCPL and B by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories in 1972. C uses many concepts from these languages and added the concept of data types and other powerful features. Since it was developed along with the UNIX operating System, it is strongly associated with UNIX. This operating System, which was also developed at Bell Laboratories, was coded almost entirely in C. UNIX is one of the most popular network operating systems in use today and the heart of the Internet data superhighway.

For many years, C was used mainly in academic environments, but eventually with the release of many C compilers for commercial use and the increasing popularity of UNIX, it began to gain widespread support among computer professionals. Today, C is running under a variety of operating systems and hardware platforms.

During 1970s, C had evolved into what is now as “traditional C”. The language became more popular after publication of the book ‘The C programming Language’ by Brian Kerningham and Dennis Ritchie in 1978.The language came to be known as “K&RC” among the programming community. The rapid growth of C led to the development of different versions of the language that were similar but often incompatible.

To assure that the C language remains standard, in 1983, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) appointed a technical committee to define a standard for C. The committee approved a version of C in December 1989 which is now known as ANSI C. It was then approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in 1990. This version of C is also referred to as C89.

During 1990’s C++, a language entirely based on C, Underwent a number of improvements and changes and became an ANSI/ISO approved language in November 1977. C++ added several new features to C to make it not only a true object-oriented language but also a more versatile language. During the same period, Sun Microsystems of USA created a new language Java modelled on C and C++.

All popular computer languages are dynamic in nature. They continue to improve their power and scope by incorporating new features and C is no exception. Although C++ and Java were evolved out of C, the standardization committee of C felt that a few features of C++/ Java. If added to C, would enhance the usefulness of the language. The result was the 1999 standard for C. This version is usually referred to as C99. The history and development of c is illustrated in Figure 1.