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 ParadigmImperative, procedural, structured 2 SignificanceMade Unix portable across hardware, and directly shaped the syntax of most major languages that followed it. 2 Classification
Typing Discipline Typing Discipline C
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In Field
Source Computer History Museum
Influenced
Source Wikipedia: C++
Source Wikipedia: Go (programming language)
Source Wikipedia: Java (programming language)
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
Source Wikipedia: Perl
Source Wikipedia: PHP
"Zig is a system programming language designed to be a general-purpose improvement to the C programming language." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_(programming_language)
Invented By
Source Computer History Museum
Preceded By
Source Wikipedia: History of programming languages
"The typeless nature of the language was seen as a disadvantage, which led Thompson and Ritchie to develop an expanded version...which became the ubiquitous C programming language." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_(programming_language)
Predecessor Of
Source Wikipedia: Objective-C
Sources
1. Wikidata: C
- Wikidata Q15777, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
- Wikidata Q15777 P571 (inception)
- Wikidata Q15777 P7078 (typing discipline)
View the Source2. Computer History Museum
Wikipedia: C (programming language)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
C is a general-purpose programming language created in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie.
- In Group: C Lineage Languages
View the Source Encyclopedia Britannica: Computer Science
Encyclopedia Britannica Editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc, 2024Influenced: JavaScriptView the Source Wikipedia: C++
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: C++, Lead paragraph, on C extensionView the Source Wikipedia: Java (programming language)
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: Java, Lead paragraph, on syntax resemblanceView the Source Wikipedia: Go (programming language)
Wikipedia: Perl
Wikipedia: History of programming languages
Wikimedia FoundationPreceded By: Assembly Language, Early languages sectionView the Source Wikipedia: PHP
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: PHP, InfoboxQuote, Influenced: PHP, Infobox
Influenced by Perl, C, C++, C#, Java, Kotlin, Tcl, JavaScript, Rust, Swift
Wikipedia: Objective-C
Wikimedia FoundationPredecessor Of: Objective-C, Syntax sectionQuote, Predecessor Of: Objective-C, Syntax section
a strict superset of C
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