Features of C Programming Language

A procedural language.

In procedural languages like C, a list of predefined instructions are carried out step by step. A typical C program may contain one or more procedures (functions) to perform a task.

If you are new to programming, you might think this is the only way all programming languages work. However, there are other programming paradigms as well. One of the commonly used paradigms is Object-oriented programming (OOP) which allows developers to create objects to solve the given task. If you are interested, check out the differences between procedural and object oriented languages.

C programs are fast.

Newer languages like Python and Java offer more features (garbage collection, dynamic typing) than C programming. However, the performance lowers due to additional processing.

C language trusts programmers and allows direct manipulation of the computer hardware. This is not possible in most high-level programming languages. It’s one of the reasons why C is considered good choice to start learning programming.

Standard C programs are portable.

“Write once, compile everywhere”. Well-written standard C programs are portable, meaning, programs written in one system (e.g. Windows 7) can be compiled in another system(e.g. Mac OS) without any change.

Use of Modularity.

You can store sections of C code in the form of libraries for future use. This concept is known as modularity.

C itself can do very little on its own. The power of C language comes from its libraries. C comes with standard libraries to solve common problems. Suppose, you need to display something on the screen, you can include “stdio.h” library that allows you to use printf() function.

Statically typed language.

C is a statically typed language. This means that the type of a variable is checked during the compile time but not in the run-time. This helps in detection of errors during the software development cycle. Also, the statically typed languages are faster than dynamically typed language in general.

General purpose.

Despite being old, C is used in variety of applications from system programming to photo editing softwares. Some of the applications where C programming is used are as follows:

• Embedded Systems
• Operating System - Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS
• Databases - PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL Server
• Other Uses - Network drivers, Compilers, Print spoolers