The Language of Love

 

Software engineers are often polyglots who will learn or be exposed to multiple programming languages over the course of their career. But I think most will always hold a special affection for the first language they learn, most likely because it's the first time they realise they have the ability to write code and achieve an outcome. Once that bug bites it steers you towards a path where you continue to hone that craft.

For me that language is C and its successor C++.

Potentially my view is biased because of the things I've outlined above but I believe C is a very good language for all potential developers to start with. If you learn how to code close to the metal it will develop skills and a way of thinking that will be of benefit to you as you progress onto high level languages with greater levels of abstraction from how your code is actually running.

In The Beginning

In the late 1960s and early 1970s as the Unix operating system was being developed engineers realised that they needed a program language that could be used to write utilities and programs to run on the newly forming platform.

One of the initial protagonists in this field was Ken Thompson.

After dismissing existing programming languages such as Fortran he started to develop a variant of an existing language called BCLP. He concentrated on simplifying the language structures and making it less verbose. He called this new language B with the first version being released around 1969.

In 1971 Dennis Ritchie continued to develop B to utilise features of more modern computers as well as adding new data types. This culminated in the release of New B. Throughout 1972 the development continued adding more data types, arrays and pointers and the language was renamed C.

In 1973 Unix was re-written in C with even more data types being added as C continued to be developed through the 1970s. This eventually resulted in the release of what many consider the be the definitive book on the C programming language, written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie The C Programming Language became known as K&R C and became the unofficial specification for the language.

C has continued to be under active development right up until the present with C23 expected to be released in 2024.

C with Classes

In 1979 Bjarne Stroustrup began work on what he deemed "C with Classes".

Adding classes to C turned into an object oriented language, where C had found a home in embedded programming running close to the metal, adding classes made it more suitable for large scale software development.

In 1982 Stroustrup began work on C++ adding new features such as inheritance, polymorphism, virtual functions and operator overloading. In 1985 he released the book The C++ Programming Language which become the unofficial specification for the language with the first commercial version being released later that year.

Much like C, C++ has continued to be developed with new versions being released up until the present day.

Usage Today

Software Engineering is often considered to be a fast moving enterprise, and while many other programming languages have been developed over the lifetime of C and C++ both are still very widely used.

Often being used when performance is critical, the fact they run close to the metal allows for highly optimised code for use cases such as gaming, network appliances and operating systems.

Usage of C and C++ can often strike fear into the heart of developers who aren't experienced in their use. However the skills that usage of C and C++ can develop will prove invaluable even when working with higher level languages so I would encourage all software engineers to spend some time expose themselves to the languages.

Good engineers can apply their skills using any programming language, the principles and practices of good software development don't vary that much between languages or paradigms. But often there are better choices of language for certain situations, and C and C++ are still the correct choice for many applications.