Despite the popularity of higher-level programming languages, the C programming language continues to empower people around the world. There are numerous reasons to believe that C programming will be around for a long time. Here are some of the reasons why C is unbeatable and almost required for specific applications.

Why the C Programming Language Still Runs the World?

There are many programming languages available now that enable developers to be more productive than with C for certain types of tasks. Higher level languages have considerably larger built-in libraries that make it easier to work with JSON, XML, UI, web pages, client requests, database connections, media manipulation, and so on.

Nonetheless, there are numerous grounds to anticipate that C programming will be around for a long time. One size does not fit all when it comes to computer languages. Here are some of the reasons why C is unbeatable and almost required for specific applications.

Efficiency and portability

C is almost an assembly language. It is as close to the machine as feasible, while also being nearly universally available for existing CPU architectures. Almost every existing architecture has at least one C compiler. And nowadays, because modern compilers generate highly efficient binaries, it's difficult to improve on their output with hand written assembly.

Because of its portability and efficiency, 'additional programming language compilers, libraries, and interpreters are frequently implemented in C.' The principal implementations of interpreted languages such as Python, Ruby, and PHP are written in C. Compilers for other languages utilise it to communicate with the machine. C, for example, is the intermediate language that powers Eiffel and Forth.

Manipulation of Memory

An important characteristic that makes C ideal for system programming is arbitrary memory address access and pointer arithmetic (operating systems and embedded systems).

At the hardware/software boundary, computer systems and microcontrollers map their controllers and I/O pins into memory locations. To communicate with the outside world, system applications must read and write to those specific memory regions. As a result, the ability of C to manipulate arbitrary memory addresses is critical for system programming.

Deterministic Resource Utilization

Garbage collection, or even dynamic allocation for some embedded systems, is a common language feature on which system programming cannot rely. The time and memory resources available to embedded applications are quite constrained. They are frequently employed in real-time systems where a non-deterministic call to the garbage collector is not an option. And, if dynamic allocation cannot be employed due to a lack of memory, it is critical to have alternate memory management strategies, such as storing data in custom addresses, as C pointers enable. Languages that rely significantly on dynamic allocation and trash collection are unsuitable for resource-constrained systems.

The runtime of Code Size C is really short. And its code has a smaller memory footprint than most other languages.

When compared to C++, a binary generated by C that is sent to an embedded device is around half the size of a binary generated by similar C++ code. One of the primary reasons for this is exception support.

Exceptions are a great tool added by C++ over C, because if not triggered and implemented correctly, they have almost no execution time overhead (but at the cost of increasing the code size).