Like anything new when you set out to do programming, you find yourself surrounded with strange and potentially weird terms, and fancied jargon. In this book, we’ll review those terms as well as present an overviewoftheentireprogrammingprocess.Itisverylikelythatyou’reeagertogetstartedwithwriting codes, and you may have already viewed a later chapter in this book. It is important to know a few key terms and programming concepts.
History of C Programming Language
Back in 1972, a computer scientist at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories started to develop some programs he neededforhisownuse.WhatDennisRitchiestarteddevelopingthenhasevolvedintotheCprogramming language, which by now is widely used around the world.
He was trying to make computing as simple as possible. Dennis Ritchie realized that the then-current assembly language were much too complex. They attempted to reverse this trend by building a small, simple programming language on a minicomputer.
What Dennis Ritchie wanted to maintain was not only an efficient computer programming language in which to create programs, but also a computer programming language around which programming community could form—fellowship. They knew based from previous experiences that the real nature of joint computing as provided by time-shared, remote accessed systems is not just to enter computer code into a terminal, but to motivate post programming communication.
TheCprogramminglanguageisageneralpurposeandstructuredprogramminglanguage.Itisalsocalled a procedural oriented programming language.
C is not specifically designed for specific application areas. However, it was well suited for business and scientific applications. It has various features like control structures, looping statements, and micros required for applications. The C language has the following features:
• Portability • Flexibility • Effectiveness and Efficiency • Reliability • Interactivity
What is Programming?
Programming is where you create software. Software controls hardware, which is the physical part of an electronic device such as a computer, phone, tablet, gaming console, micro-controller or some other gizmo. Those instructions take the form of a programming language. For this book, that language is the C programming language, which was developed back in the early 1970s.
It is very old. In fact, over time the C programming language has been considered the Latin of programming languages. Unlike Latin, C is not dead. Lots of C programming still goes on despite of newerandfancierprogramminglanguagescomingalong.ButlikeLatin,Cisthefoundationuponwhich many other programming languages are built. If you know C, you can more easily learn those other languages.
In a later chapter, we will talk about the programming language’s syntax and other rules. But for now, know that the code you write is called a source code.
What is a Source code?
A source code is a plain text file that contains the programming language, all formatted and pretty and written properly. In C, the file is saved with a .c filename extension. To create a source code, you use a text editor. Any text editor can do, although some editors offer helpful features like color coding, line numbers, syntax checking and other tools.
The source code is then compiled into object code. The program that creates the object code is called a compiler. The traditional name of the C language compiler is CC, which stands for C compiler. The compiler reads the source code file and generates an object code file.
Objectcodefileshavea.ofilenameextension,andtheyusethesamefilenameastheoriginalsourcecode file. The next step is called Linking. It is often forgotten because modern compilers both compile and link, but linking is really a separate step.
The linker takes the object code file and combines it with C language libraries. The libraries are the workhorse of the language. They contain routines and functions that control whatever device you are programming.Ifallgoeswell,theendresultisaprogramfile.Youcanthentestruntheprogramtomake surethat itworksthewayyouwantitto.Andifnot,youstart thecycle all overagain: edit, compile and link, or “build,” and test run.
All of these tools—the editor, compiler, linker—all originated at the command prompt or terminal. You canstillfindthemtheretoo.Programmersdoalotofcodingatthecommandpromptbecauseitisquick. More common, however, is to use an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment.
1. OVERVIEW
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