C is a procedural programming language. It was initially developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973. It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write an operating system. The main features of the C language include low-level access to memory, a simple set of keywords, and a clean style, these features make C language suitable for system programmings like operating system or compiler development.
Learning C programming has a lot of benefits, but the foremost thing in which it helps is to understand the underlying architecture of how things work?
Consider a situation where a person learns to drive a Car. In this modern era with advancements in technology, we have many options when it comes to buying a car. There are cars with auto-driving mode, auto gear change features, etc which reduces the manual overheads and makes driving the car easier. Suppose the person learns to drive on an auto-gear change-enabled car. After learning to drive, the person applied for a driving license for which he need to pass a driving test. The driving test is now on a manual car with no auto-gear change feature. The person was even not able to answer some basic questions related to gears as he was not even aware of it and eventually ended up getting disqualified.
Learning C has a similar benefit. If the person had learned to drive on a manual car, he could have easily driven the automatic car as well. Similarly, if a person learns C programming first, it will help him to learn any modern programming language as well. As learning C help to understand a lot of the underlying architecture of the operating system. Like, pointers, working with memory locations, etc.
Let us now look at some of the important advantages of learning C programming:
- C is a Middle-Level Language. The middle-level languages are somewhere between the Low-level machine-understandable assembly languages and High-Level user-friendly languages. Being a middle-level language, C reduces the gap between the low-level and high-level languages. It can be used for writing operating systems as well as doing application-level programming.
- Helps to understand the fundamentals of Computer Theories. Most of the theories related to computers like Computer Networks, Compiler Designing, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems are based on the C programming language and require a good knowledge of C programming if you are working on them. In modern high-level languages, the machine-level details are hidden from the user, so in order to work with CPU cache, memory, network adapters, learning C programming is a must.
- Fewer Libraries. C programming language has fewer libraries in comparison with other high-level languages. So, learning C programming also clears programming concepts to a great extent as you have to write a lot of things from scratch. You will not be dependent on the programming language entirely for implementing some basic operations and implementing them on your own will also help you to build your analytical skills.
- C is very fast in terms of execution time. Programs written and compiled in C execute much faster than compared to any other programming language. C programming language is very fast in terms of execution as it does not have any additional processing overheads such as garbage collection or preventing memory leaks etc. The programmer must take care of these things on his own.
- Embedded Programming. C is extensively used in Embedded Programming. Embedded Programming is also referred to as micro-controller programming, where the C program is used to control micro-controllers. Microcontrollers and embedded programming are widely used in auto-motives, Robotics, Hardware, etc.
Source: Geeksforgeeks.