First C Program

Writing your first C program is a rite of passage for any aspiring programmer. The traditional first program is 'Hello, World!', a simple application whose only job is to display the text 'Hello, World!' on the screen. While trivial in function, its true purpose is to confirm that your development environment is set up correctly and that you understand the basic workflow of creating and running a program. The process begins with writing the source code using a text editor. You'll type the standard C structure: `#include <stdio.h>`, followed by `int main() { ... }`, and inside the curly braces, the statement `printf("Hello, World!\n");` followed by `return 0;`. Let's break down the `printf` line. `printf` is a function from the standard input-output library (`stdio.h`) that prints formatted text to the console. The text you want to print is enclosed in double quotes. The `\n` is a special character sequence known as an escape sequence; it represents a newline character, which moves the cursor to the next line after the text is printed. Once you have written the code and saved it in a file with a `.c` extension (e.g., `hello.c`), the next step is compilation. You'll use a C compiler, such as GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), by running a command in your terminal like `gcc hello.c -o hello`. This command tells GCC to take the source file `hello.c` and produce an executable file named `hello`. If there are no errors in your code, the compiler will successfully generate the executable. The final step is to run your program by typing `./hello` in the terminal. If everything is correct, you will see 'Hello, World!' printed on your screen, marking your successful entry into C programming.