History of C

Credits

Dr. Niall McMahon
Drawn from C++, How to Program by Deitel and Deitel and other sources. See History of Computing Links and History, Part 1.
Autumn 2022.

BCPL and B

• BCPL developed by Martin Richards for writing OS software and compilers.
• B developed by Ken Thompson using ideas from BCPL.
• B used to create early versions of UNIX.
• Bell Labs in 1970 on a DEC PDP-7.
• BCPL and B were type-less. Every item of data occupied one word in memory.
• Programmer had to decide how to handle an item in memory.

C

• C evolved by Dennis Ritchie at Bell.
• Implemented on a DEC PDP-11 in 1972.
• C draws on BCPL and B and adds typing.
• Used as UNIX development language.
• All OSes written in C/C++.
• C is hardware independent and code is portable.

Mainstream C

• By late 70s, C well established.
• The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie.
• Brought C to widespread attention.
• One of the most successful computer books.

Standardising C

• Many variations due to different hardware platforms.
• Similar but incompatible.
• Standard version of C needed.
• ANSI and ISO in late 80s.
• ANSI/ISO 9899.

Next Generation Languages

• Then C++.
• Object oriented etc.
• Smalltalk Xerox PARC.
• C remains a system software and OS development mainstay.

Modern OS: Fuschia

Languages used in Fuchsia development.

• C/C++
• Dart
• FIDL
• Go
• Python
• Rust