What is 'C' Language?

Hello friends, today we are going to see what is exactly the computer 'C' language? 'C' is a Programming language developed at AT and T’s Bell Laboratories of the USA in the early 1970s. It has designed by a man named Dennis Richie. C began to replace the more familiar languages of that time

like PL/I, ALGOL, etc.  So many programmers preferred C to other languages like PL/I, FORTRAN, Pascal or APL, etc. C becomes so popular because it is reliable, simple, and easy to use.

Step by step development of C Language (History):

In the early 1970s, there are so many languages, which were used for a specific purpose. For example, COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was being used for commercial Applications, FORTRAN (Formula Translation) for Engineering and Scientific Applications, and so on. At this stage, people want only one language instead of many languages, each for a different purpose. They need only one language which can perform all possible applications. Therefore, an international committee was formed, which was developed ALGOL 60. ALGOL 60 never became popular because it seemed too abstract, too general. To reduce this abstractness, a new language CPL (Combined Programming Language) was developed by Martin Richards at Cambridge University to solve CPLs problems, but unfortunately, it turned out to be too less powerful and too specific.

Around the same time, Ken Thompson was written B language at AT and T’s Bell Labs, as a simplification of CPL. But like BCPL, B is also very specific. After that Ritchie inherited the features of B and BCPL, added some of his own features, and developed C language which is still keeping it powerful.

Year	Language	Developed by	Remarks
1960	ALGOL	International Committee	Too general, too abstract
1963	CPL	Cambridge University	Hard to learn, difficult to implement.
1967	BCPL	Martin Richards at Cambridge University	Could deal with only specific problems
1970	B	Ken Thompson at AT and T	Could deal with only specific problems
1972	C	Dennis Ritchie at AT and T	Lost generality of BCPL and B restored

    Fig: the figure shows the evolution of the C language

Where C stands?

When we compare other programming languages with C, all the programming languages can be divided into two categories.

• High-Level languages or Problem-Oriented Languages: These languages have been designed to give a better programming efficiency, i.e. faster program development. Ex. FORTRAN, BASIC, Pascal, etc

• Low-Level Language or Machine Oriented Languages: These languages have been designed to give better machine efficiency i.e. faster program execution. Ex. Assembly Language and Machine Language etc.

C stands in between these two categories. That’s why it is often called a Middle-Level Language or Intermediate Language since it was designed to have both: a relatively good programming efficiency (as compared to machine-oriented languages) and relatively good machine efficiency (as compared to problem-oriented languages). For further information please check more posts on this blog.