Why does the C programming language

refuse to die?
As a technology research analyst, I try to keep up pace with the changing world
of technology. It seems like every single day, there is a new programming
language, framework, or tool emerging out of nowhere. In order to keep up, I
regularly have a peek at the listicles on TIOBE, PyPL, and Stackoverflow along
with some twitter handles and popular blogs, which keeps my FOMO (fear of
missing out) in check.

So here I was, strolling through the TIOBE index, to see if a new programming
language is making the rounds or if any old timer language is facing its
doomsday in the lower half of the table. The first thing that caught my attention
was Python, which interestingly broke into the top 3 for the first time since it
was ranked by TIOBE. I never cared to look at Java, since it has been claiming
the throne ever since it became popular. But with my pupils dilated, I saw
something which I would have never expected, especially with the likes of
Python, C#, Swift, and JavaScript around.

There it was, the language which everyone seemed to have forgotten about, C,
sitting at second position, like an old tower among the modern skyscrapers in
New York. A quick scroll down shocked me even more: C was only recently
named the language of 2017 by TIOBE. The reason it won was because of its
impressive yearly growth of 1.69% and its consistency – C has been featured in
the top 3 list for almost four decades now.

This result was in stark contrast to many news sources (including Packt’s own
research) that regularly place languages like Python and JavaScript on top of
their polls. But surely this was an indicator of something. Why would a
language which is almost 50 years old still holds its ground against the ranks of
newer programming language?

C has a design philosophy for the ages

A solution to the challenges of UNIX and Assembly

The 70s was a historic decade for computing. Many notable inventions and
developments particularly in the area of networking, programming, and file
systems took place. UNIX was one such revolutionary milestone, but the biggest

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problem with UNIX was that it was programmed in Assembly language.
Assembly was fine for machines, but difficult for humans.

So, the team working on UNIX, namely Dennis Ritchie, Ken thompson, and
Brian Kernighan decided to develop a language which could understand data
types and supported data structures. They wanted C to be as fast as the
Assembly but with the features of a high-level language. And that’s how C came
into existence, almost out of necessity. But the principles on which the C
programming language was built were not coincidental. It compelled the
programmers to write better code and strive for efficiency rather than being
productive by providing a lot of abstractions.

Let’s discuss some features which makes C a language to behold.

Portability leads to true ubiquity

When you try to search for the biggest feature of C, almost instantly, you are
bombarded with articles on portability. Which makes you wonder what is it
about portability that makes C relevant in the modern world of computing. Well,
portability can be defined as the measure of how easily software can be
transferred from one computer environment or architecture to another. One can
also argue that portability is directly proportional to how flexible your software
is.

Applications or software developed using C are considered to be extremely

flexible because you can find a C compiler for almost every possible platform
available today. So if you develop your application by simply exercising some
discipline to write portable code, you have yourself an application which
virtually runs on every major platform.

Programmer-driven memory management

It is universally accepted that C is a high performance language. The primary

reason for this is that it works very close to the machine, almost like an
Assembly language. But very few people realize that versatile features like
explicit memory management makes C one of the better performing languages
out there. Memory management allows programmers to scale down a program to
run with a small amount of memory.

This feature was important in the early days because the computers or terminals
as they used to call it, were not as powerful as they are today. But the advent of
mobile devices and embedded systems has renewed the interest of programmers
in C language because these mobile devices demand that the programmers keep
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memory requirement to a minimum.any of the programming languages today
provide functionalities like garbage collection that takes care of the memory
allocation. But C calls programmers’ bluff by asking them to be very specific.
This makes their programs and its memory efficient and inherently fast.

Manual memory management makes C one of the most suitable languages for
developing other programming languages. This is because even in a garbage
collector someone has to take care of memory allocation – that infrastructure is
provided by C.

Structure is all I got

As discussed before, Assembly was difficult to work with, particularly when

dealing with large chunks of code. C has a structured approach in its design
which allows the programmers to break down the program into multiple blocks
of code for execution, often called as procedures or functions.

There are, of course, multiple ways in which software development can be

approached. Structural programming is one such approach that is effective when
you need to break down a problem into its component pieces and then convert it
into application code.

Although it might not be quite as in vogue as object oriented programming is

today, this approach is well suited to tasks like database scripting or developing
small programs with logical sequences to carry out specific set of tasks.

As one of the best languages for structural programming, it’s easy to see how C
has remained popular, especially in the context of embedded systems and kernel
development.

Applications that stand the test of time

If Beyoncé would have been a programmer, she definitely might have sang
“Who runs the world? C developers”.

And she would have been right. If you’re using a digital alarm clock, a
microwave, or a car with anti-lock brakes, chances are that they have been
programmed using C. Though it was never developed specifically for embedded
systems, C has become the defacto programming language for embedded
developers, systems programmers, and kernel development.

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 C: the backbone of our operating systems
We already know that the world famous UNIX system was developed in C , but
is it the only popular application that has been developed using C? You’ll be
astonished to see the list of applications that follows:

The world desktop operating market is dominated by three major operating

systems: Windows, MAC, and Linux. The kernel of all these OSes have been
developed using the C programming language. Similarly, Android, iOS, and
Windows are some of the popular mobile operating systems whose kernels were
developed in C.

Just like UNIX, the development of Oracle Database began on Assembly and
then switched to C. It’s still widely regarded as one of the best database systems
in the world. Not only Oracle but MySQL and PostgreSQL have also been
developed using C – the list goes on and on.

What does the future holds for C?

So far we discussed about the high points of C programming, it’s design
principle and the applications that were developed using it. But the bigger
question to ask is, what its future might hold.

The answer to this question is tricky, but there are several indicators which show
positive signs. IoT is one such domain where the C programming language
shines.

Whether or not beginner programmers should learn C has been a topic of debate
everywhere. The general consensus says that learning C is always a good thing,
as it builds up your fundamental knowledge of programming and it looks good
on the resume. But IoT provides another reason to learn C, due to the rapid
growth in IoT industry. We already saw the massive number of applications
built on C and their codebase is still maintained in it. Switching to a different
language means increased cost for the company. Since it is used by numerous
enterprises across the globe the demand for C programmers is unlikely to vanish
anytime soon.