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CSC 114 INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING
History of C Programming Language
Mr. D.J. Temu.
[email protected] 1
Outline
• What is C Programing?
• Why C language is so Important?
• Origin of C Language
• History of C Language
What is C Programing?
• C is a high-level and general purpose
programming language that is ideal for
developing firmware or portable
applications.
• Originally intended for writing system
software, C was developed at Bell Labs by
Dennis Ritchie for the Unix Operating
System (OS) in the early 1970s.
Why C language is so Important?
• C language cases:
➢ Oracle is written in C
➢ Core libraries of android are written in C
➢ MySQL is written in C
➢ Almost every device driver is written in C
➢ Major Part of web browser is written in C
➢ Unix Operating system is developed in C
➢C is the word’s most popular programming language
Why C language is so Important? (cont..)
• For a student point of View:
➢C is important to build programing skills.
➢C covers basic features of all programming
➢C is also helpful for Campus recruitment
process
➢C is the most popular language for
hardware dependent programs
The Creator of C language
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was
an American computer scientist.
He created the C programming
language. He also created The
Unix operating system with his
long time colleague Ken Dennis Ritchie
1941-2011
Thompson. Father of C and UNIX
Origin of C Language
• ALGOL
1960 • International Group
• BCPL
1967 • Martin Richards
•B
1970 • Ken Thompson
• Traditional C
1972 • Dennis Ritchie
•K & R C
1978 • Brain Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie
• ANSI C
1989 • ANSI Committee
• ANSI/ISO C
1990 • ISO Committee
Origin of C Language (cont..)
• BCPL and B are "type less" languages
whereas C provides a variety of data types.
• In 1972 Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs
writes C and in 1978 the publication of
The C Programming Language by
Kernighan & Ritchie caused a revolution
in the computing world.
History of C Language
• Evolved from two previous languages – BCPL,
B
• BCPL (Basic Combined programming
language) used for writing OS & compilers
• B used for creating early versions of UNIX
OS
• Both are “typeless”language
• C language evolved from B (Dennis Ritchie –
Bell labes)
Algol programming language
• Algol is a computer programming
language
• Developed in 1958.
• Named for the algorithmic process of
definition of aprogramming problem.
• Short for Algorithmic Language.
• Uses words to bracket blocks and was
the first to use begin end pairs.
BCPL
• Full form: Basic Combined Programming
Language.
• Developed in 1996.
• Developed by Martin Richards
• Its having high portability.
• BCPL is the successor to the CPL
programming language.
B
• Developed in 1969
• Designed by D. M. Ritchie and K.
L.Thompson
• Developed at Bell Labs
• B was derived from BCPL
• Designed for primarily non-numeric
applications.