programming-for-dummies

The History of Computer Programming 15
manipulate the processor) and high-level languages (which isolate you from
the details of manipulating the processor), computer scientists created an
intermediate language dubbed C.
Book I
Chapter 1
The idea behind the C programming language is to give programmers the
ability to manipulate the processor directly like assembly language, but also
give you the chance to ignore these technical details, if you want, like a highlevel
language.
As a result, a C program doesn’t look as cryptic as assembly language, but
also isn’t as easy to read as a high-level language, as the following C program
demonstrates:
Getting Started
Programming a
Computer
#include
int main(void)
{
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
exit(0);
}
Just by looking at this C program, you can probably figure out that it prints
Hello World! on the screen. However, you might see a bunch of cryptic
curly brackets, back slashes, and other odd symbols and characters that
may make no sense whatsoever. Don’t worry. Just notice how confusing C
programs can look while at the same time being somewhat understandable.
Because C lets you directly control the processor like assembly language, but
still write programs that look somewhat understandable and easy to read and
write, most major programs, such as operating systems like Microsoft Windows,
Linux, and Mac OS X, are written in C.
Pros and cons of programming languages
The whole purpose of machine language, assembly language, high-level language,
and the C language is to give you different ways to give instructions to
the processor (computer). Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which type of programming
language you use because it’s possible to write the exact same program in
machine language, assembly language, a high-level language (like BASIC or FOR-
TRAN), and C.
The only difference is that writing a program in machine language takes a
really long time and is very difficult to write, fix, and understand. A similar
program written in assembly language is smaller and simpler than an equivalent
machine language program.
Writing the same program in the C language makes the program even smaller
and much easier to write and understand. If you use a high-level language, the
program would most likely be the smallest and easiest to understand out of
them all.