10 Interesting Facts About C Language | BitsOfCS

1. What is C programming?

or When was the C language invented?

or When was the C language created?

or When the C programming language was developed?

or Where the C programming language was developed?

C is a programming language that is used for general purpose. It is a procedural, imperative and case sensitive programming language. It was developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell laboratories in order to develop the UNIX operating system.

2. Who invented the C language?

or Who developed the C Programming language?

or Who is the father of C programming?

C language developed by the American computer Scientist Dennis M. Ritchie. His colleagues called him ‘dmr’. He was awarded by the Turing Award in 1983 ‘for their development of generic OS theory and for the implementation of the UNIX OS’. Hence Dennis Ritchie is the father of C language. 

3. Is C is a high level language or why?

or Why C language is called high level language?

Yes, C programming language is a high level  language. High level language (HLL) are programmer friendly languages. High level languages are machine independent programming languages. 

In simple words, if you write a C program in one machine, that will definitely produce same output on a different machine.

4. Is C language is compiled or interpreted?

or In which language C compiler is written?

No, C language doesn’t use interpreter. It uses compiler to implement the program. C compiler scans the whole code and translate it into machine code(low level code) in different levels.

First C compiler was written in ‘B‘ language. B language was the ancestor language of C language.

5. How does the C programming language work?

or How does a C program runs?

or How does a C program executes?

Above image shows the compilation process of a C program. 

For example- Every file that contains C program must be saved with ‘.c’ extension. That’s how the compiler understand that is the C program file. We write a C program named ‘manu.c’ that known as the source file, containing the C program. Then C compiler take this source file as input and produce an object file named ‘manu.obj’ as output(if there is no error in the source file manu.c). Then, linker take this ‘manu.obj’ file as input and link the library functions to the C program and produces ‘manu.exe’ executable file as output. Now, in order to execute this ‘manu.exe’ file, loader comes into the picture. The loader will load the program into RAM and inform the CPU what is the starting address of the program.

6. What is the structure of the C program? 

or What are C programming basics?

A ‘C program’ basically contains the following parts-

1. Preprocessor commands

2. Functions

3. Variables

4. Statements

5. Comments

In order to understand the structure of the C program, let’s take the simplest example that prints my name on the screen.

Now, we are going to understand this ‘manu.c’ program line by line-

1.  The first line of our program #include<stdio.h> is a preprocessor command, that tells the compiler to include the ‘stdio.h’ header file before the compilation of the program. Generally that header file having the definition  of the predefined functions that we are using in our program.

2.  In the second line, we have int main() that is known as main() function. From here the execution of the program starts. 

3.  The third line will be neglected by the C compiler, because of /*…..*/ . These lines are called comments. We use /*…..*/ to add a comment in our program. Comments help in documentation and tell about the particular statement of the program.

4.  In the fourth line, we have print(“Manu”); (pre-defined function) that prints my name on the screen.

5.  The fifth line return 0; terminates the main() function and return the value 0.

7. Is C language dead?

or Is C language still used?

or Is C a dead programming language?

C language is a relatively small language that makes it easy to implement C compiler. Also understanding this language is easy compared to other programming languages. That’s why lot of students understand this language as the first programming language. C programming language is still used for system programming, desktop applications, embedded hardware programming etc.

8. Where C language is used?

or Who uses the C language? 

or Where C programming is used? 

or Why C programming is used?

C programming language used to develop the operating system for desktop as well as smart phones. Some of the operating system like Microsoft Windows, Apple’s OS X(Now MacOS), Symbian are developed in C programming language. Also it is used in compiler development. Linux kernel is written in C programming language. 

9. What are the applications of the C language?

or What is the use of C language in real life?

Or Where is the C language is used nowadays?

Here is the list of applications of the C programming language-

1.  UNIX is the first operating system that developed in C language.

2.  Also Microsoft Windows, Symbian and other smart phone’s operating system was scripted in C language.

3.  Web browser ‘Google Chromium’ developed in C language.

4.  Database software, MySQL(popular database software) written in C.

5.  Widely used in embedded systems.

6.  For system software and desktop application.

7.  Used in compiler production.

10. How to learn C programming language?

or How to learn C language? 

or What is the best C programming book?

There are two ways to learn C language-

1.  You can read this book – The C Programming Language (Second Edition)

2.  You can watch these NPTEL lectures – Introduction to programming in C and Problem solving through programming in C

Resources: Wikipedia | ASCS Lab | NPTEL | Stack Overflow

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