C

C Overview

C is a general purpose, staticly typed, imperative programming language that was founded in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at Bell Labrotories.

C is a low level language meaning it provides constructs which map efficiently to typical machine instructions. Baiscally it’s a more user friendly way to write low level programs. Instead of pulling your hair out writing low level code in an assembly language, you can abstract a lot of the fuss and write equivalent programs in c

Because it’s so low level, many operating system kernals, and even other programming languages are implemented at least in part, using C. And many modern progrmaming languages today borrow syntax and best practices from C.

How C Runs

All c programs must utilize a compiler who’s job is to compile the c code down into machine code readable by the computer. So anytime you want to run a c program you have to compile it first.

C relies on the user to manage the program’s memory, and the syntax of C is largly influenced by the B programming language.

Choosing an IDE

Many developers choose to write C using a basic text editor, but there are also more specilized integrated development enviornments, some of the most popular include Code Blocks, Eclipse and Net Beans.