C was developed from 1969 to 1973 by Dennis Ritchie of Bell Laboratories. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) ratified the ANSI C standard in 1989, and this standardization later became the responsibility of the International Standards Organization (ISO). The standards define the C language and a set of library functions known as the C standard library. Kernighan and Ritchie describe ANSI C in their classic book, which is known affectionately as “K&R” . In Ritchie’s words , C is “quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.” So why the success?
- C was closely tied with the Unix operating system. C was developed from the beginning as the system programming language for Unix. Most of the Unix kernel (the core part of the operating system), and all of its supporting tools and libraries, were written in C. As Unix became popular in universities in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many people were exposed to C and found that they liked it. Since Unix was written almost entirely in C, it could be easily ported to new machines, which created an even wider audience for both C and Unix. .
- C is a small, simple language. The design was controlled by a single person, rather than a committee, and the result was a clean, consistent design with little baggage. The K&R book describes the complete language and standard library, with numerous examples and exercises, in only 261 pages. The simplicity of C made it relatively easy to learn and to port to different computers. .
- C was designed for a practical purpose. C was designed to implement the Unix operating system. Later, other people found that they could write the programs they wanted, without the language getting in the way.
C is the language of choice for system-level programming, and there is a huge installed base of application-level programs as well. However, it is not perfect for all programmers and all situations. C pointers are a common source of confusion and programming errors. C also lacks explicit support for useful abstractions such as classes, objects, and exceptions. Newer languages such as C++ and Java address these issues for application-level programs.