Introduction

C is a very popular general-purpose, structured programming language. There are free C compilers for many of the commonly used computer systems, making C a very accessible language to millions of programmers around the world.

C was designed and implemented in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. and formally documented in 1978 in the famous White Book The C Programming Language, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. A paper written by Dennis Ritchie describing the development of C is here.

The power of C lies in the fact that programs can range from very simple to highly complex and still be maintainable and efficient. The internet is rife with simple C programs, understanding them is one step of many which could culminate in the knowledge required to write an operating system, Unix for example. Now, granted, only a few programmers have written or helped write a highly efficient and portable operating system using C. The point is: it is possible!