History of C

The C programming language has a rich history that is deeply intertwined with the development of the UNIX operating system. It was created in the early 1970s, specifically between 1972 and 1973, by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). C was an evolution of a previous language called 'B', which was created by Ken Thompson, also at Bell Labs. The language B itself was derived from BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language). The primary motivation for developing C was to have a high-level, portable language to rewrite the UNIX operating system, which was originally written in assembly language. Assembly was fast but not portable across different computer architectures. C provided the perfect balance: it was efficient enough to give low-level memory access similar to assembly, yet high-level enough to allow for structured programming and portability. This decision was revolutionary, as it meant the entire operating system and its utilities could be easily ported to new hardware by simply writing a C compiler for that hardware. The language's power and flexibility led to its rapid adoption. In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of 'The C Programming Language,' a book that served as the language's specification for many years and is famously known as 'K&R C.' To standardize the language, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee in 1983, which culminated in the 'ANSI C' standard (C89) in 1989. This was later adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), leading to subsequent revisions like C99, C11, and C18, each adding new features to the language.