Why C?

WHY C?

An opinion that is often heard today is – “C has been already superceded by languages like C++, C# and Java, so why bother to learn C today”. I seriously beg to differ with this opinion. There are several reasons for this:

(i) I believe that nobody can learn C++ or Java directly. This is because while learning these languages you have things like classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, arrays, pointers, exception handling, references, etc. do deal with apart from knowing the actual language elements. Learning these complicated concepts when you are not even comfortable with the basic language elements is like putting the cart before the horse. Hence one should first learn all the language elements very thoroughly using C language before migrating to C++, C# or Java.

(ii) C++, C# or Java make use of a principle called Object Oriented Programming (OOP) to organize the program. This organizing principle has lots of advantages to offer. But even while using this organizing principle you would still need a good hold over the language elements of C and the basic programming skills.

(iii) Major parts of popular operating systems like Windows, UNIX, Linux is still written in C. This is because even today when it comes to performance (speed of execution) nothing beats C. Moreover, if one is to extend the operating system to work with new devices one needs to write device driver programs. These programs are exclusively written in C.