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C for Not Yet Techies"Computer Careers: Can Put Bread on Your Table: The Meat and Potatoes Programming Language for High Tech Jobs"by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career |
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C is probably the most common language used in commercial computer careers programming today. Its object-oriented mutation, C++, is coming on strong. Visual Basic has Microsoft’s official endorsement. Java is officially hot. But it is still there behind the scenes, plugging away. A basic foundation for modern computing. Although developed around 25 years ago, it is the language most programmers with computer jobs want to learn. Most commercial software is written in either C or C++. In the Neolithic age of computers, about 1972, the Bell Laboratories wanted a new operating system - so they invented CSince Bill Gates had not yet invented Windows, they were struggling along with an operating system written in assembler language. Because of the limited raw computing power of those machines, the high level programming languages of that time were not efficient enough to provide an operating system. They needed C for that job. Remember, assembler language is barely one step up from the strings of 0000s and 1111s that is machine language, the actual bits of data that the computer processes. Assembler uses very low-level, short and cryptic commands. It is a nightmare to maintain and even worse to update. If you think C is complicated, just try assembler. Bell wisely wanted to get aware from using assembler language as an operating system, but at that time there was no high level programming language that could cope with it. So, being techies – even though at that time being a techie was NOT in or cool or a sure ticket to wealth -- they developed a brand new high level language. The actual inventors were Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (well known as K&R). Supposedly they developed but threw away two prior attempts, A and B. C was the keeper.As a high level programming language, it is easy to maintain and upgrade, yet it runs almost as efficiently as assembler language. A program could run nearly 10 times as quickly as an equivalent COBOL program. In those primitive pre-Pentium III days, that was important. It rapidly replaced Pascal in popularity, and even today is challenged only somewhat by Visual Basic. (By the way, the operating system that it was used to write as a result of this project has become rather important and well known in its own right – Unix. But that’s another story.) It is considered somewhat "cryptic," because it uses relatively few words, but many letters and operators. It has only 32 keyword commands, compared to COBOL which has over a hundred. It does have more operators than almost any other programming language. C - Page 2 |
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Permission is granted to reprint the above article in an ezine or on a website as long as it is reprinted in full, with no changes, with full credit and with this contact information and link included at the bottom. All other rights reserved. Copyright 2007 by Info Ring Press All Rights Reserved. Computer Careers (Home) Sitemap Contact Privacy Info Ring Press Richard Stooker PO Box 617 130-G Ballwin Manor Dr Ballwin, MO 63011 (636) 394-2052 rick@inforingpress.com |