Languages

C

the single letter C, as in sea

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "C." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/c.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). C. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/c

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-c,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {C},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/c},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

C is a general purpose programming language created by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs between 1969 and 1973, developed alongside the Unix operating system and used to rewrite Unix itself, which made Unix far easier to port to new kinds of computer hardware. C gives programmers close control over memory and hardware while remaining more portable and readable than assembly language, a combination that made it, and the many later languages it directly influenced, including C plus plus, Java, C sharp and JavaScript's own syntax, among the most consequential language designs in computing history.

Facts

First Released

1972 1

Paradigm

Imperative, procedural, structured 1

Significance

Made Unix portable across hardware, and directly shaped the syntax of most major languages that followed it. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

In Field

Operating Systems

Source Computer History Museum

Influenced

C++

Source Wikipedia: C++

Source Wikipedia: Go (programming language)

Java

Source Wikipedia: Java (programming language)

JavaScript

JavaScript's curly brace, C style syntax was carried over through Java, which Netscape asked Brendan Eich to make JavaScript resemble at the surface level, rather than through a direct line of descent from C itself.

Source Encyclopedia Britannica: Computer ScienceEncyclopedia Britannica Editors

Perl

Source Wikipedia: Perl

PHP

Source Wikipedia: PHP