Course:
Complete C Programming Course
In this lesson, you will learn
Before C, various programming languages were used in the 1960s, but they had limitations:
Fast and hardware-specific, but not portable or easy to write.
Required deep hardware knowledge.
A simplified version of BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language).
Used for early Unix development.
However, B lacked data types, and had performance issues.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1969–70 | Ken Thompson creates the B language at Bell Labs. |
| 1972 | Dennis Ritchie develops the C language, based on B, at Bell Labs. |
| 1973 | The Unix operating system is rewritten in C, making it portable across different machines. |
| 1978 | Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie publish the first book “The C Programming Language”, also called K&R C. |
| 1989 | ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standardizes C, leading to ANSI C or C89. |
| 1990 | ISO (International Organization for Standardization) adopts ANSI C as ISO C. |
| 1999 | C99 standard is released, adding features like inline functions, // comments, and variable-length arrays. |
| 2011 | C11 standard is introduced with improved support for multithreading and security functions. |
| 2018 | C18 (also called C17) becomes the latest standard with bug fixes and minor changes. |
To provide a structured, high-level language that could replace assembly for system programming.
To write the Unix operating system in a portable and efficient way.
To have a language that allowed direct memory access using pointers.
To create a tool that combined the speed of low-level with the readability of high-level languages.
Used in operating systems like Unix, Linux, Windows, macOS, etc.
Influenced many other languages: C++, Java, C#, Python, Perl, JavaScript.
Forms the foundation of modern compilers, interpreters, and system drivers.
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Developer | Dennis Ritchie |
| Year | 1972 |
| Origin | Bell Laboratories, USA |
| Purpose | System programming, especially UNIX OS |
| Key Features | Efficiency, portability, modularity, low-level access |
| Current Standard | C18 (2018) |
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