The C programming language is a low-level (close to the computer) computer programming language that was developed to do system programming for the operating system UNIX and is an imperative programming language. C was developed in the early 1970s by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. It is a procedural language, which means that people can write their programs as a series of step-by-step instructions. C is a compiled language. This means that the computer doesn't have to build the application every time it is opened.
Because the ideas behind C are kept close to the design of the computer, the compiler (program builder) can generate machine code/native code for the computer. Programs built in machine code can be very fast. C has a variety of uses. From writing simple console applications, to even operating systems, such as Linux, MacOS and UNIX. The language itself has very few keywords, and most things are done using libraries, which are collections of code made to be reused. C has a big standard library called stdio, which stands for standard input/output.