C Programming Language Course

C is often considered to be the mother of all languages because so many other languages have been based on it.

Though C is simple it is one of the most powerful languages ever created.  Considering it was created over 40 years ago, it is still used heavily and is usually in the top 5 or 10 most popular and most widespread programming languages in the world.

Learning C can actually make you better at programming in other languages like C++, Java, or C# by equipping you with a mental model of what the computer is actually doing when you run your programs.

By learning how things really work “under the hood”, and understanding memory space, CPU architecture, and so on, you can create more efficient programs, and obtain a huge advantage over other programmers in the process.

The C programming language has led to the development of both Java and C++, which are popular today and both simplified programming even further. C is one of the thousands of programming languages currently in use.

C has been around for several decades and has won widespread acceptance because it gives programmers maximum control and efficiency. C is an easy language to learn. It is a bit more cryptic in its style than some other languages, but you get beyond that fairly quickly.

C is a compiled language, which means that once your C program is written, you’ll need to run it through a C compiler to convert the program to an executable form.

The computer can then run the C program. The C compiler is vital to creating a C program, because without it, your program will remain in human-readable form as opposed to machine-readable form [source: King].

Programmers can either purchase a commercial compiler or download a free C compiler online. One of the things that programmers like about C is that it enables them to scale down programs so they can run on very little memory. This has become especially important in recent years when so many people are using small-scale computers like smartphones and tablets.