Why you should choose C as your first programming language ?

3 min readMay 23, 2020

First of all before choosing any language we should have some knowledge of programming language.

What is c ?

C is a procedural programming language developed at AT&T laboratories in between 1969 to 1972 by developer named Dennis Ritchie as soon as it release C gain its popularity because it is reliable, easy to use and simple to understand as compare to B ,Forth, Lisp languages. In an technological industry every now and then programming languages are created and they vanishes out quickly but C has survived for more than three decades a language surviving that long has to be really good.

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Why you should choose C as your first programming language ?

many people are of opinion that is herd today is “C has been superseded by languages like C++ , Java and C# so why bother to learn C today”.

I seriously defer with this opinion doesn’t mean that other people are wrong. I am just telling my perspective that why you should choose c as your first programming language.

a) Many popular language like Ruby, Python,Perl,PHP and Databases like MYSQL Database,PostgreSQL,Oracle Database, MS SQL Server are written in C and Operating system like Unix, Linux, Windows,Android and Mac OS they have C in their Core. If ones intends to extend an operating system to work with new devices they would have to write device drivers programs. These programs are written in C.

Most of the software that controls the network sockets, Routers, Gateways, Hubs, Switches were written in C language.Most of the compilers in the world were written in C and not C++

Note: The first three databases are also has C++ code.

b) Common consumer devices like microwaves oven, washing machine, your coffee machine , your alarm clock , your TV , your radio and your digital cameras are getting smarter day by day . This smartness comes from microprocessor, an operating system and a program embedded in this devices. These program take less memory and they need to run faster so these programs are written in C.

c) Professional 3D games and software those games and software need to work as fast as possible so they are written in C language since they handle a huge amount of data and do many calculations per second many popular gaming frameworks like DirectX has been build using C Language.

d) C programming language is mid level language because it is very close to hardware after assembly language and this make C one of the fastest programming language.

e) The Data Structure and algorithm which is most important for a student to learn most of the Data Structures and algorithm books are written for C and C++ because they are one of the oldest language.

f) By learning C as your first language you will get to know how the algorithms for searching and sorting are made from scratch in other programming languages we see that their are function like sort() push() pop() reverse() and we don’t understand how they are written from scratch in C you have to make your own pop() push() reverse() sort() function this gives you the deep understanding of programming fundamentals.

g) C is fast and C provide memory management with the help of pointers which other programming language does not have expect few. You learn how to access memory how to free memory with the help of some predefined function like realloc() malloc() calloc() and free();

h) C++,C# or Java make use of a principle called OOP (Object Oriented Programming) to organize the program. This organizing principle has a lot of advantages but even while using this organizing principle, you would still need a good hold over the language elements of C and the basic programming skills.So it makes more sense to first learn C and then migrate to C++,C# or Java.Though this two-step learning process may take more time, but at the end of it, you will definitely find it worth the trouble.