C Programming: What is C? Why it Needed?

C is a powerful, flexible, portable and elegantly structured programming language. Since C combines the features of high-level language with the elements of the assembler, it is suitable for both system and application programming, It is undoubtedly the most widely used general purpose programming language today. The concept of procedure-oriented programming can be well understood and learned with the help of C language, which is also needed for the implementation of functions and modules of object-oriented languages like C++, JAVA etc. Most of the prevalent technologies like .NET, EJB etc and languages like C++, JAVA also use the C language based syntax for looping, arrays, functions, etc. Hence C language is an ideal starting point to learn programming.

Importance of C

The increasing popularity of C is probably due to its many desirable qualities. It is a robust language whose rich set of build-in functions and operators can be used to write any complex program. The C compilers combines the capabilities of an assembly language with the features of a high-level language and therefore it is well suited for writing both system software and business packages. In fact, many of the C compilers available in the market are written in C. The main importance of C are listed below.

• Program written in C are efficient and fast.
• It provides various build-in functions.
• C is highly portable. The C program written in one computer with one operating system can be run into another computer with another operating system. That means program written in Windows can run in Linux or Unix as well with no or little modifications.
• C programming can be viewed as the collections of modules so it is highly structured.
• The modular programming makes testing and debugging easier.
• C has ability to extends itself.