The Reason Why C Programming Language Was Named C

The first thing that comes to our mind for the term programming language is C. It is a decade old general-purpose high-level programming language which has defied all norms of popularity. The language has been given the name C because it succeeds another language called B.

Cis one of the most popular computer programming languages which has existed since the last 44 years. It was created by the famous American programmer Dennis Ritchie – with the help of Ken Thompson – while working at Bell Labs. Most of us have this curiosity that why is the programming language named after a single alphabet. And why it is C, not any other letter. Anyways, we would have questioned the name of the programming language even if a different letter was used. So, let’s focus on the story instead.

The naming of C doesn’t involve any crunchy fiction story, like in the case the Linux Penguin Tux. It is said Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, contracted penguinitis after a man-eating penguin running at 100-miles per hour attacked him.

Because C comes after B

The reason why the language was named “C” by its creator was that it came after B language. Back then, Bell Labs already had a programming language called “B” at their disposal. The B language, a high-level language created by Thompson, was itself an implementation of the programming language BCPL designed by Martin Richards of Cambridge University.

The Unix operating system was originally created at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. It was implemented on the PDP-7 (manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1965) computer using the assembly language. Later, Unix was ported to PDP-11 using assembly language but the developers thought about rewriting it using B language.

The B language fell short of abilities to take benefit of the features offered by the newer member of the PDP series, the PDP-11. That’s when Dennis Ritchie started working on a new high-level programming language taking clues from B language. C had a great influence on the Unix operating system. In fact, most of the Unix system including a big part of its kernel is now available in C language.

C has been improved from time to time since its initial release. That’s the reason it’s still a part of the curriculum in many schools around the world and it is the 2nd popular programming language. The language has been an inspiration to many other programming languages like C++, C#, Java, PHP, etc.

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SyntaxDB — A Perfect Programming Syntax “Search Engine” For Coders | Padsa Information

SyntaxDB calls itself a programming syntax database that wishes to eliminate the need to use Google to search syntax during coding. It allows you to search your syntax queries and shows you helpful results along with further documentation. Currently, SyntaxDB supports nine popular programming languages.

Very often programmers new to the field ask if is it okay to use Google and Stack Overflow to look up some syntax. The answer is yes — searching the web is a routine task of a good developer and its frequency even increases with time. Using Google doesn’t make you a bad programmer. Instead, it makes you even better at it and teaches you new things.

To make things even easier for programmers, Anthony Nguyen, a software developer studying at Queen’s University, has created SyntaxDB.

This website calls itself the programming syntax database and allows you to search your required query. Nguyen calls it helpful for those who often visit Google to look for their programming related queries.

The website’s home page is very simple and plain. You just need to enter a language or a concept, and it starts showing relevant suggestions. As soon as you hit enter, a search result page is shown to address your query.

Once you click on a concept, you are shown a small definition and syntax along with some related notes and examples. In the right sidebar, there are links to the official documentations for more help.

Currently, SyntaxDB supports 9 languages — Java, C, C++, C#, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Swift, and Go.

SyntaxDB also offers integrations with DuckDuckGo, Slack, and Visual Studio Code to make coding easier. There’s also an API available that lets you write your own integration.

In future, the website plans to provide more plugins for code editors and increase the size of the database and the number of programming languages.

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

29 Highest Paying Programming Languages You Need To Learn In 2017

Willing to learn new software skills and programming languages in 2017? Well, you’re at the right place. According to a career website, skills with lower job openings rank higher on the list of the highest paying programming languages. While Languages like Objective-C, Scala, and Go help one rake in big bucks, evergreen languages like SQL, Java, and C++ continue to create a large number of jobs.

Recently, we told you about the 20 highest paying software skills for developers. Based on the data from the job site Indeed, this showed favorable conditions for software engineers with the knowledge of cloud-based skills. Overall, Amazon Web Services like DynamoDB and MapReduce turned out to be the winner.

Different career-focused websites keep conducting surveys, collecting industry data, and publishing them on their blogs. Recently, I came across a post by the Paysa Blog, which was named Silicon Valley’s Most Valuable Skills.

I found that blog pretty interesting, particularly the coverage of the highest paying programming languages.

The website has listed the highest paying programming languages by average salary and percentage of job vacancies demanding that language. The chart shared below accounts 29 different programming languages. Before examining the details, let’s take a look

This chart clearly shows one trend — the highly compensated skills are listed on the lesser number of job openings. If we think for a moment and apply the universal demand-and-supply principle, this makes sense.

Objective-C, a programming language that’s slowly being replaced by Apple’s open source Swift programming language, appeared on less than 2% listings. It manages to offer developers and engineers a $140,000 annual salary.

The same trend is observed when we look at Verilog, R, and Scala. Strictly salary-wise, here’s the top 15 list:

Highest paying programming languages

1. Verilog
2. Scala
3. Scheme
4. Objective-C
5. R
6. Perl
7. Go
8. Python
9. C++
10. C
11. Ruby
12. LaTeX
13. Java
14. MATLAB
15. Flex

All 29 languages, along with their position listings, can be seen in the chart shared above.

If we take a look at the position listings, we’ll find that SQL leads the chart, followed by Java, JavaScript, C#, and C++. Being the most in-demand language across all job postings, SQL was one of the lowest compensated languages.

Did you find this article interesting? Which languages do you wish to learn in 2017? Feel free to share your views in the comments section below

What Was The World’s First Programming Language For Computers?

Even though there’s not a definite answer, Plankalkül, pronounced “Plan Calculus”, is regarded as the world’s first high-level programming language for computers. Created by German engineer Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945, the language didn’t receive much attention. The popular languages that followed Plankalkül were Fortran and Lisp.

Every other day, we come across the release of some new programming language. While popular languages like Java and C++ continue to impress us with their timeless nature, comparatively newer languages like Go and Swift are attracting the newer crowd.

But, did you ever wonder what was the world’s first programming language? Since Ada Lovelace (1840s) is widely regarded as the first programmer, the “set of symbols” she was using would comprise the first programming language–right? Probably because Babbage’s machine was never built and he didn’t have anything that could be called a programming language.

There are others who find solace in Alan Turing’s work and cite the descriptions Of Turing machine (1936). In his papers, he has written programs and mathematical simulations.

The answer to the world’s first programming language is the tricky one. But, if we take the high-level non-von Neumann languages for a computer as a basis, Plankalkül, pronounced “Plan Calculus”, is widely considered the first programming language (Source: Wikipedia, StackExchange). Plankalkül was created by a German engineer Konrad Zuse for engineering purposes between 1942 and 1945.

Here’s how to write Hello world! in Plankalkül, the world’s first programming language for computers:

R1.1(V0[:sig]) => R0
R1.2(V0[:m x sig]) => R0
0 => i | m + 1 => j
[W [ i < j -> [ R1.1(V0[i: m x sig]) => R0 | i + 1 => i ] ] ] END
R1.3() => R0
‘H’;’e’;’l’;’l’;’o’;’,’;’ ‘;’w’;’o’;’r’;’l’;’d’;’!’ => Z0[: m x sig] R1.2(Z0) => R0
END

Back then, Zuse failed to gather much feedback. In 1972, Plankalkül was comprehensively published and implemented in a dissertation. Later in 1998 and 2000, there were instances of other independent implementations.

Just in case you’re wondering about the literal meaning of Plankalkül, it means “formal system (kalkül) for planning (plan)”.

In this discussion, I would also like to mention Fortran, the first widely-popular high-level programming languages. Lisp was another early language that was beaten by Fortran by a couple years.

Did you find this article on the world’s first programming language for computers interesting? Share your views in the comments section below.

How To Pick Your First Programming Language (4 Different Ways)

Learning coding from scratch could be a tough task and it could take years of hard work to master a language. So here I am going to address the biggest problem a beginner faces: How to pick up my first programming language?

Recently I came across with a very enriching infographic that addressed the same question. Udacity has utilized the date of the top ten programming languages in the US (provided by IEEE Spectrum) to pick the best programming language for you as a beginner.

The basis on which this infographic is made varies from location, your lifestyle and the potential growth in career after selecting that particular language.

Based on the flexibility, Python or C++ comes first as it allows you work on the variety of fields such as gaming to making of embedded systems. JS or PHP prepares you for a web development career. Similar observations and trends are made based on the average pay per year, geography and popularity.

Take a look at the infographic below:

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What are the some of the best programming tips and tricks | Padsa Information

• Readability is the path to more interesting projects within a career.
• Readability is the path to knowing what you wrote 5 years ago, and makes code reuse actually viable
• Readability is the path to acquiring protégées that can learn from your style.
• Readability that is understandable by others allows people to appreciate your code at a level of architecture, not just functional.
• Readability is the path of lease resistance when you have a bug in your code.
• Readability is the how you put ideas into understandable text and syntax, much like writing a paragraph in natural language.
• Readability is somehow not a priority for most other developers, however it’s probably pretty important to your development director, if you work for one.
• Readability is more important than most believe. With moore’s law, it’s even more important to focus on readability than pre-mature optimization.

Here’s more:

• Most schools and colleges teach computer science like trade school skills. How to fix a car. How to be a dental assistant. How to be an admin.
• Most schools and colleges don’t realize there’s a difference between Computer Science and Programming. These are different.
• Most of the people applying for job in California are Programmers, when the job actually requires a Computer Scientist.
• Most people only know one or three programming languages. I personally believe you need to know between 7–8 of them to really master the idea of programming.

Psychology wise?

• Most programmers are very insecure about their programming skills and end up in bandwagon debates over which programming language is better.
• Following that, most don’t realize that each programming language is just a tool that’s better at something while other is better at something else… Like speaking Spanish while in Spain, or knowing Chinese in the middle of China down. Right tools for the job.
• Most programmers are habituated to just google everything, that’s how they were taught.
• Most insecure programmers rave about how “compact” their code is. Which serves very little purpose on compiled languages.
• Most insecure programmers focus on hyper tuning a few lines of code. Good programmers focus on delivering functional and useable software.

Habits….

• Most programmers follow the syntax and structure of the style they were taught. Very few question the style they were taught. Examples are {’s on the if-statement line, or on the next line vertically aligned with the }.
• Most programmers don’t make diagrams before they begin experimenting. Many just copy some existing example and start their modifications from there (which runs the risk of adopting bugs from existing examples).
• Most programmers don’t unit test. They believe they are better than that, or they are lazy.
• Most programmers read xkcd.
• Programmers that are computer scientists are better at computational problems.

What most don’t realize about computer science (as opposed to only programming.)

• You can merge sort your socks.
• You can apply scalability methods of algorithms to work labor level processes to improve business efficiency.
• You can learn other fields and industries because CS is a catalyze for industries like physics, chemistry, rendering, etc…
• You can apply CS methods to accounting, management, logistics, market trends, human resource management, workflow processing engineering, etc…
• Computer science has philosophies within it that can change your mode of thinking.

Lots and lots. It’s amazing what you can do if you pay attention to the computer science bit, rather than only how to program software.

Computer science includes:

• Hardware
• Software
• Programming
• Algorithms
• Problem solving
• Efficiency measurement methods
• Stability methods
• Integration concepts
• Computer architecture

And most importantly….

• Computer Science History

You learn to appreciate these things when you take in CS and listen in beyond only the programming trade skill.

Either you are a viable employee… Or you’re an amazing one that could hold a position of technical leadership.

Take your time to comment on this article.