C has been an evergreen language and played a prominent role for most of the system developments that took place in the last few decades. C programming was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs and was made for general-purpose, imperative computer programming, that supported structured programming, lexical variable, scope, and recursion etc.
Today, we have lots of programming languages to choose and learn but as a beginner, everybody has a question “Which programming language should I learn first?” and most of the answers that we get on the internet or through suggestions are “C”. In this article, we’ll try to find out if C Programming is still worth learning in 2018. If yes then why?
Where C language is used?
- Microsoft’s Windows kernel is developed mostly in C, with some parts of assembly language.
- Linux’s kernel is also written in C.
- Every driver and program in mac is running on a C-powered kernel.
- Ios, android, and windows phone kernel are also written in C.
- World’s popular databases, including Oracle, MYSQL, MS SQL server are coded in C. (with C++)
- 3D movies are created with applications that are generally written in C.
- Embedded systems like an alarm clock, remote and censors controls, etc are most likely programmed in C.
- Even my favorite programming language Python also is written in C.
Is It Still Worth Learning C? (Advantages)
Flexibility
As a middle-level language, C combines the features of both high-level and low-level languages. It can be used for low-level programming, such as scripting for drivers and kernels and it also supports functions of high-level programming languages, such as scripting for software applications, etc.
Compatibility
Various features of C including direct access to machine level hardware APIs, the presence of C compilers, deterministic resource use, and dynamic memory allocation make C language an optimum choice for scripting applications and drivers of embedded systems.
Portability
C is a highly portable language. It is a hardware-independent language or platform-independent language. It is used for scripting system applications which form a major part of Windows, UNIX, and Linux operating systems.