Short History of C Programming

Short History of C Programming

There are a lot of programming languages in use today, one of which is C. There are many C programming languages, including Objective-C, C++, and C #. None of these are in the same language. So, how did C get started?

The Beginning

The C programming language came from Bell Labs in the early 1970s. According to the Bell Labs paper The Development of the C Language by Dennis Ritchie, "The C programming language was developed in the early 1970s as a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system. Built on a tiny machine as a tool to improve a meager programming environment. "Originally, Ken Thompson, an employee of Bell Labs, wanted to develop a programming language for the new Unix platform. Thompson modified the language of the BCPL system and created B. However, due to its slow nature and inability to take advantage of PDP-11 features in the operating system, not many utilities have been written in B. This led to Ritchie to improve on B, and thus to create C.

Early Implementation and Language Standard

The development of C was to become the basis of Unix. According to the Bell Labs paper, "The basics of modern C were complete by the beginning of 1973. The language and compiler were strong enough to allow us to rewrite the Unix kernel for the PDP-11 in C during the summer of the year. "This meant that C was now becoming a strong language that could and would be implemented across many systems. By the mid-1970s, C-based Unix was used in many projects within the Bell System as well as "a small group of research-oriented industrial, academic and government organizations outside [Bell Labs]."

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published The C Programming Language, which would serve as a language reference until a formal standard was adopted. Five years later, the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) set up a committee, X3J11, to establish the formal C standard. The C standard was ratified as the ANSI X3.159-1989 "Programming Language C."

Uses Now

According to Toptal, UNIX operating systems are written in C and most of Linux is written in C. Databases such as Oracle Database, MySQL, MS SQL Server, and PostgresSQL are also written at least partially in C. C is the basis of a lot of system kernels. Other programming languages, such as Python and Perl, use compilers or interpreters written in C.

 

C has changed over the years and is still a common language to use in lower-level programs such as kernels. But it is also used for many applications, ranging from device drivers to compilers or interpreters of other programming languages. Language also made way for C++, Objective-C, C #, and many more C-based languages, each of which has its specialty.

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