Why Use C Programming Language?

I have been using C programming language since 1996 during my sophomore years taking Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos here in my home town in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental Philippines. During that time Microsoft DOS is the most popular operating system and we are also using Microsoft Windows 95. 

The first C compiler that I am using in Turbo C 2.0 published by Borland International. I find learning C kinda difficult at first because I don't have a computer at home during those days I just rent or borrow computers from my classmates during my college day.  Below are the reasons why I think C is an important language in learning computer programming.

Why Use C?

At the present time, there are thousands of programming languages to choose from. But still, C programming language is being taught and use in everyday programming projects especially for those project which deals more on hardware interfacing and critical applications.  

There are some people says that C is already been surpass by C++, C#, and Java in terms of its popularity and uses in the modern programming project. In our own understanding here have listed the reasons why it is still beneficial to learn C at the present time.

• We believe nobody can learn programming languages like C++, C# or Java effectively. Primarily because this programming language deals with advanced topics like classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, templates, exception handling, references, collections etc.do deal with apart from knowing the actual language elements. Learning these complicated concepts when you are not even comfortable with the basic language elements like variable declarations, control structures, conditional statements, identifiers.  Hence one should first learn all the language elements very thoroughly using C language before migrating to C++, C# or Java. Though these two-step learning process may take more time, at the end of it you will definitely find it worth the trouble.

• Learning C language is very essential to understand the fundamentals of problem-solving and application of basic data structures like arrays, list, binary trees, sorting algorithms, etc. which can be applied also in C++, C#, and Java programming languages.

• The use of microcontrollers like Arduino it uses a derivative version of C language in order to write computer programs into it.

• Majority of operating systems like UNIX, Mac OS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows is still written in C. The device drivers used in Microsoft Windows is being written in C and some of them are also written in C++.

• Web programming languages like PHP and Perl has based its program statement structures like looping statements and functions for example in C programming language. Understanding the C language, it is easier to learn PHP and Perl because you are already familiar with its programming statements.

• The development of mobile phones, tablets, and printers their operating system and microcontroller programs most of the time is written in C. These programs not only have to run fast but also have to work in a limited amount of memory in its devices. No wonder that such programs are written in C. With these constraints on time and space, C is the ideal language of choice while building such operating systems and programs. A good example is the Android mobile phone operating system which is a very popular operating the system in a mobile phone, especially Smart Phones it is based on a modified version of Linux operating system developed by Google it is written in C.   The iOS operating system by Apple iPhones is also developed using C, C++, Objective-C and Swift programming languages.