C is a general-purpose computer programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie , was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system...

 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

.

Although C was designed for implementing system software

System software

System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software.The most basic types of system software are:...

, it is also widely used for developing portable application software

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

.

C is one of the most widely used programming languages of all time and there are very few computer architecture

Computer architecture

In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....

s for which a C compiler

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

 does not exist. C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most notably C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, which began as an extension to C.
C is an imperative

Imperative programming

In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state...

 (procedural

Procedural programming

Procedural programming can sometimes be used as a synonym for imperative programming , but can also refer to a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call...

) systems implementation

System programming

System programming is the activity of programming system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims to produce software which provides services to the user System programming (or systems...

 language.