PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Course Description

A high-level programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the mid-1970s. Although originally designed as a systems programming language, C has proved to be a powerful and flexible language that can be used for a variety of applications, from business programs to engineering. C is a particularly popular language for personal computer programmers because it is relatively small -- it requires less memory than other languages.

The first major program written in C was the UNIX operating system, and for many years C was considered to be inextricably linked with UNIX. Now, however, C is an important language independent of UNIX.

Although it is a high-level language, C is much closer to assembly language than are most other high-level languages. This closeness to the underlying machine language allows C programmers to write very efficient code. The low-level nature of C, however, can make the language difficult to use for some types of applications.

Latest Version of C

The current latest version of C language is C11, which was introduced in 2011. It is supported by all the standard C language compilers.

Many new features have been introduced in this version and an overall attempt to improve compatibility of the C language with C++ language has been made. We will learn about the C11 edition, once we are done with learning C language, towards the end of this tutorial series.

What will you learn?

C is the most basic programming language that is the base to almost all programming languages. It excels as the model of programming language. C is a standardized language that each programmer must learn.

If you are a beginner

Phase 1

1. Start with tokens i.e. data types, variables, constants, operators.

2. Study decision making and loops.

Phase 2

1. Structures

2. Array

3. Strings

4. Pointers

Phase 3

1. Input Output

2. File input output

3. Command line arguments

These basics help you not only in programming but also lay the foundation for data structures, algorithm design, UNIX, C++ and many more.

However, if you want to go for advanced course

You must write a lot of programs based on operator precedence, conditional constructs, strings, pointers to arrays, bit formation, stack implementation, standard file I/O, function call etc

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites to learn C programming. In fact, C is considered as a language to start with for beginners. Just a bit of logical skills should be enough.