C

The portable assembly language in which Unix, and most of the world's foundations, are written.

Core Principles & Analysis

• Dennis Ritchie created it at Bell Labs in 1972 to rewrite Unix beyond assembly.
• Its manual, 'The C Programming Language' by Kernighan and Ritchie, was the de facto standard for a decade.
• Memory safety flaws in C remain the largest single class of security vulnerabilities.