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Current Location: John's Corner » Computing Section » Article 2 Article was finished by Sunday, 3rd of January, year: 2010.

C and C++ must be wonderful! It's used for many things. That includes programs, background processes, or even simple applets like you see on your panel at where the start menu is, or whatever it is called.

Well, in this article, I will explain what C is and where it came from.

C and its Background

C was created at the start of 1969 and the end of 1973. It was started at the AT&T Bell Laboratories. It was intended that this language only be for creating Unix. But being much better than B and having a generally well-made structure(I mean when it was offically done), it was publicized over a period of time. It is a good language, and I have seen games out there that prove my point.

What C is

C is a compiled language. Tcl/Tk, Perl, SQL, and others, are interpreted languages. Compiled means that it will work without the interpreter. When compiled, the human-readable syntax of C is converted into machine-readable code.

C is easy to learn, fast, versatile, and is adapted to almost every OS. Although the standard functions created have somewhat cryptic names, like printf, scanf, or others, you can easily remember what these are for. Check Google to see what C looks like.

Detailed History about C

A man whom a lot in this field had known as Dennis Ritchie was the one who created C. The legacy started since he graduated from Harvard University. Here is some more detailed background.

This man was born on the 9th day of September, in the year of 1941. The location was Bronx-ville, state of New York. His parents were (1) a worker at Bell Labs, and (2) a homemaker. Ritchie grew up in New Jersey, where he lived a child-hood of excellent grades in school. All thanks to that, he got to attend Harvard University; there, he studied for the bachelor's degree in physics, and eventually suceeded. He was now a university bachelor's graduate in physics.

This is where he started going for it: he was still going to school, and he just happened to attend a lecture about the new Harvard's computer system, Univac, and how it worked. Fascinated by what he had heard, he wanted to know more. So, outside of his studies, Ritchie began to explore computers more closely. He wanted to know how they were programmed more than anything else about the machine.

While he was at Harvard, he got a job at MIT, or Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At that time, computer labs were less picky about people with potential to help on their computers. Ricthie, with his undying curisosity, appeared just perfect for the job. After that, he was proudly working for many years to help develope more advanced computers.

While on the job, he also began work on a better operating system for more portable computers. Most computers back then were as big as your living room, literally; however, smaller desktop computers were being created. But there was one small problem, these OSes were not simple at all.

Ritchie decided to make one. MIT, Honeywell, and General Electric administered his project, along with other college scientists who came over to co work on it, and that includes workers from private companies. They wanted a computer that could handle up to 1000 users at once and 24 hours a day. This was all just a puzzle to Ricthie, not a problem; therefore, this never seemed bad to him. That was his view on programming.

Conclusion

Well, that's all for this article. If you want to learn the rest, go on to this page.