"C" was fit for purpose as operating system programming language requiring direct access to hardware, with tight resource restraints. You might consider it high-level-assembler. It improved software productivity for developing and porting Unix. The genesis of the C programming language is imparted here. The trouble perhaps was its spread from systems programming to application programming and some syntactical issues carried over from its heritage of the typeless BCPL and B languages, and well as the ease with which pointers could accidently corrupt the heap and stack.in another thread, MSimon wrote:The "C" programming language is probably the best thing ever done to destroy software productivity
C++ on the other hand is a mongrel beast of an OO language that should have been shot in the head at birth - darn you Microsoft!!!! Why oh why could you not have chosen Objective-C with its Smalltalk roots?
For anyone needing some mastery in C programming, I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programmin ... 0131774298