C Family of Programming Languages

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The C family of programming languages includes C, C++, C# and Objective C. C was the original programming language in this family, developed by Dennis Ritchie, one of the key early developers of UNIX. Since then, C has been expanded into C++, with more modern features and reworked into C#, by Microsoft, for Windows and Objective C, by Apple, which added Mac specific features.

All major operating systems are written in C or some variant of it including all modern Unices, Windows and Mac OS. C is the most successful programming language of all time and has influenced the design of many other programming languages developed since it. C is practically omnipresent, compilers have been developed for virtually every computing platform that ever existed.

C languages are compiled from human readable source-code into binary machine readable code which is executed in the host operating system. Because of this, and like other compiled languages, C programs must be recompiled for each target OS platform. Since C does not have a virtual machine and does not have a built-in user-interface like Java and some other languages porting C programs to other platforms can prove difficult.

C languages are very fast, however, and are among the fastest languages. They have a minimalist design and are "low-level" in nature, allowing the programmer very precise control over the machine. These factors help to account for its popularity in operating system design. Compilers and interpreters for other programming languages are frequently written in C for the same reasons.

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