programming-for-dummies

64
“Curly Bracket” Languages
With great power comes great responsibility, and C is no exception. Because
C programs can access every part of the computer’s hardware, C programs
can fail dramatically by crashing other programs, including the entire operating
system.
The efficiency of C
A C compiler tends to create smaller, faster, more efficient programs than
compilers for other programming languages. The reason is that the C language
is much simpler and thus easier to translate into equivalent machine
language commands.
What makes the C language simpler is its small number of commands or keywords.
Keywords are special commands used in every programming language.
The more keywords a programming language uses, the fewer commands you
need to make the computer do something. The fewer keywords a programming
language offers, the more commands you need to make the computer
do something.
Think of keywords like words in a human language. The fewer words you know,
the more limited your communication is. If a little kid only knows the word hot,
he can only express himself in a limited manner, such as describing something
as very hot, a little hot, or not so hot. However, if a kid knows a lot of different
words, he can express himself much better. Rather than use two or more words
to describe something as very hot, a little hot, or not so hot, a kid with a richer
vocabulary could describe the same items as scalding, warm, or cool.
A programming language with a lot of keywords means you can write a program
with fewer commands. That’s great from the programmer’s point of
view, but inefficient from the computer’s point of view.
The more keywords used in a language, the more work the compiler needs to
do to translate all these keywords into machine language. As a result, programs
written in languages that use a lot of keywords tend to run much slower than
programs written in C.
A C program compiles to smaller, more efficient machine language commands
because instead of offering a large number of keywords, the C language
offers just a handful of keywords. This makes it easy for a compiler to
translate the limited number of keywords into machine language.
However, as a programmer, you need to use C’s limited number of keywords to
create subprograms that mimic the built-in commands of other programming
languages. Because this can be impractical, the C language often includes
libraries of subprograms that mimic the built-in commands of other programming
languages.