C overview

C is a procedural, compiled, low-level programming language that has been the lingua franca of systems programming since the 1970s. It provides direct memory access through pointers, manual memory management (malloc/free), and minimal runtime overhead, making it ideal for operating systems, compilers, and embedded firmware. The C standard library is available on virtually every platform. Modern C (C11, C17, C23) adds thread support, atomics, generics via _Generic, and improved Unicode handling. C is ABI-compatible with most languages' FFI, making it the universal interop substrate. GCC and Clang are the dominant compilers; Valgrind, AddressSanitizer, and UBSan are common correctness tools.