Breif History of C Language

In 1960’s hundreds of languages had come into existence, almost each for a specific purpose. For example: COBOL was being used for commercial applications, FORTRAN for engineering and Scientific Applications and so on. At this stage people started thinking that instead of learning and using so many languages, each for a different purpose, why not use only one language, which can program all possible applications. Therefore, an international committee was set up to develop such a language. This committee came out with a language called ALGOL in 1960. However, ALGOL 60 never really becomes popular because it seemed too abstract, too general. To reduce this abstractness and generality, a new language called Common Programming Language (CPL) was developed at Cambridge University in 1963. CPL was an attempt to bring ALGOL 60 down to earth. However, CPL turned out to be so big, having so many features, that it was hard to learn and difficult to implement. Basic Combined Programming Language (BCPL) developed by Martin Richards at Cambridge University in 1967 aimed to solve this solve this problem bringing CPL down to its basic good features. But unfortunately it turned out to be too less powerful and too specific.

Around the same time Ken Thompson at AT&T Bell Lab’s as further simplification of CPL wrote a language called B. But unlike BCPL, the B language too turned out to be very specific. Dennis Ritchie inherited the features of B and BCPL, added some of his own and developed C language.