While nowadays the original C is not used as much in regular coding with other more modern languages, Unix still runs on the language almost entirely. Python, some SQL modules, and other programming languages use compilers that are partially written in C. Device drivers and kernel programming are also common uses in the modern-day for C.

Something particularly interesting about this technology is how early it came to life, and how applicable its features are. While surely, it has evolved to be different in many aspects from the 70s to the 2020s, it still has many advantages, like it is extremely fast and efficient with computer memory and working memory. C has the particularity of directly ordering things to the hardware, the physical components of the machine, which is not allowed with languages like Java or Python.

A very interesting thing to notice with C is that it is a static, or statically typed programming language. This means that the variables must be declared to use anywhere in the code. This is contrary to Python or R, but akin to Java or C++, more broadly used in mainstream coding nowadays.

Releases

The latest standard, C23 (ISO/IEC 9899:2024), was published on 31st October 2024 and, unlike the defect-fixing C17 revision of 2018, added real language features such as #embed, binary literals, typeof and nullptr.

The next revision, C2y, is being drafted by the WG14 committee (working draft N3886 from May 2026) and is planned to be published as C29 in 2029.