C

If FORTRAN and COBOL were the first compiled high-level languages, then C is their grandchild. It was created in the 70's by Dennis Ritchie as a tighter and more coherent successor to ALGOL, which was a structured successor to COBOL and FORTRAN. It was designed to be a smaller and simpler version of its predecessors, suitable for writing system-level programs, like operating systems. Before then, operating systems were hand-coded in assembly and were not portable. C was the first programming language that made portability a reality for system-level code.

C is a language that supports structured programming. That is to say that C programs are written as collections of disconnected function calls that run top-down rather than a single monolithic block of code with program control-flow happening via GOTO statements. Hence, C programs are generally easier to follow than monolithic FORTRAN and COBOL spaghetti-code. Actually, C still has a GOTO statement, but its functionality is limited and it is only recommended as a last resort if structured solutions are much more complicated.

True to its system-programming roots, it is fairly easy to interface C with assembly languages. The function-calling interface is very simple, and assembly language instructions can be embedded within C code, so linking in separate assembly-language modules is not necessary.

Advantages: Good for writing small fast programs. Easy to interface with assembly language. Very standardized, so versions on other platforms are similar.

Disadvantages: Does not easily support object-oriented techniques. Syntax can be difficult and lends itself to abuse.

Portability: While the core of the language and the ANSI function calls are very portable, they are limited to control-flow, memory management, and simple file-handling. Everything else is platform-specific. Making a program that's portable between Windows and the Mac, for instance, requires that the user-interface portions be using system-specific function calls. This generally means that you need to write the user-interface code twice. There are libraries, though, that make the process a bit easier.

Games Written in C: Lots and lots.

Resources: The classic book about C is The C Programming Language. It's gone through several iterations and has expanded to about three times its original size, but it's still a good introduction to the language. An excellent tutorial is The Waite Group's C Primer Plus.

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