White Paper on Programming in C#

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Wikipedia

Programming languages have been classified into several programming language generations. Historically, this classification was used to indicate increasing power of programming styles. Later writers have somewhat redefined the meanings as distinctions previously seen as important became less significant to current practice.

A first-generation programming language (1GL) is a machine-level programming language.

A first-generation (programming) language (1GL) is a grouping of programming languages that are machine level languages used to program first-generation computers. Originally, no translator was used to compile or assemble the first-generation language. The first-generation programming instructions were entered through the front-panel switches of the computer system.

The instructions in 1GL are made of binary numbers, represented by 1s and 0s. This makes the language suitable for the understanding of the machine but far more difficult to interpret and learn by the human programmer.

A successor to the programming language B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used programming languages, with C compilers available for almost all modern computer architectures and operating systems. C has been standardized by ANSI since 1989 (ANSI C) and by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

C is an imperative procedural language supporting structured programming, lexical variable scope, and recursion, with a static type system. It was designed to be compiled to provide low-level access to memory and language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, all with minimal runtime support. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform programming. A standards-compliant C program written with portability in mind can be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its source code.

Since 2000, C has consistently ranked among the top two languages in the TIOBE index, a measure of the popularity of programming languages.

C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL tradition. It has a static type system. In C, all executable code is contained within subroutines (also called “functions”, though not in the sense of functional programming). Function parameters are passed by value, although arrays are passed as pointers, i.e. the address of the first item in the array. Pass-by-reference is simulated in C by explicitly passing pointers to the thing being referenced.

C program source text is free-format, using the semicolon as a statement separator and curly braces for grouping blocks of statements.

The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:

The language has a small, fixed number of keywords, including a full set of control flow primitives: if/else, for, do/while, while, and switch. User-defined names are not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil.
It has a large number of arithmetic, bitwise, and logic operators: +,+=,++,&,||, etc.
More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement.
Functions:
- Function return values can be ignored, when not needed.
- Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time polymorphism.
- Functions may not be defined within the lexical scope of other functions.
- Variables may be defined within a function, with scope.
- A function may call itself, so recursion is supported.
Data typing is static, but weakly enforced; all data has a type, but implicit conversions are possible.
User-defined (type def) and compound types are possible.
- Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct) allow related data elements to be accessed and assigned as a unit.
- Union is a structure with overlapping members; only the last member stored is valid.
- Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Unlike structs, arrays are not first-class objects: they cannot be assigned or compared using single built-in operators. There is no “array” keyword in use or definition; instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for example month[11].
- Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword. They are freely inter convertible with integers.
- Strings are not a distinct data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-terminated character arrays.
Low-level access to computer memory is possible by converting machine addresses to pointers.
Procedures (subroutines not returning values) are a special case of function, with an un typed return type void.
Memory can be allocated to a program with calls to library routines.
A pre processor performs macro definition, source code file inclusion, and conditional compilation.
There is a basic form of modularity: files can be compiled separately and linked together, with control over which functions and data objects are visible to other files via static and extern attributes.
Complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical functions are consistently delegated to library routines.
The generated code after compilation has relatively straightforward needs on the underlying platform, which makes it suitable for creating operating systems and for use in embedded systems.

While C does not include certain features found in other languages (such as object orientation and garbage collection), these can be implemented or emulated, often through the use of external libraries (e.g., the GLib Object System or the Boehm garbage collector).

Many later languages have borrowed directly or indirectly from C, including C++, C#, Unix’s C shell, D, Go, Java, JavaScript (including trans pilers), Julia, Limbo, LPC, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Swift, Veri log and System Verilog (hardware description languages). These languages have drawn many of their control structures and other basic features from C. Most of them (Python being a dramatic exception) also express highly similar syntax to C, and they tend to combine the recognizable expression and statement syntax of C with underlying type systems, data models, and semantics that can be radically different.