programming languages

• imperative languages
  Pascal, Ada, Fortran, C, Matlab
• object oriented
  Smalltalk, C++, Java
• functional languages
  ML, lisp, haskell
• logical languages
  prolog

history of C

• origins
  • great-grandparent: CPL - combined programming language
  • grandparent: BCPL - Basic CPL (Martin Richards)
  • parent: B (Ken Thomson)

• unix
  (Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs, 1969)
  early unix implemented in assembler

  Ritchie enhanced B to C as "native language" of unix
  (Ritchie, the development of C language, 1993)

• standardization
  • ANSI X3J11 committee, 1983
  • standard accepted by ISO as ISO/IEC 9899-1990.
    (ISO: international standardization organization,
    IEC: international electrotechnic commettee)
  • C++ standard, 1998

• successors
  • Concurrent C (Gehani, 89)
  • Objective C (Cox, 86)
  • C* (Thinking, 90)

  • most important:
    C++ (Stroustrup, 86)

why C?

• general purpose programming language
  (traditionally used for systems programming)
• high execution speed
• compact source code
• portable code
• advanced compilers and tools for many platforms

why C++?

• object oriented design (inheritance, overloading, polymorphism)
• improved support for
  data abstractions,
  modularity

characteristics

• compiled language
  native code unlike bytecode (Java), pcode (Pascal)
• low level programming
  register variables, etc
• custom memory management

example

   main(){char *b=" .:-;!/>)|&IH%*#";float i,j,k,r,x,y=-16;while
   (puts(""),y++<15)for(x=0;x++<84;putchar(b[(int)k&15]))for(i=k
   =r=0;j=r*r-i*i-2+x/25,i=2*r*i+y/10,j*j+i*i<11&&k++<111;r=j);}

getting started - c examples