Getting Started

Question 1

Applications of C

Answer 1

• Operating Systems Linux (Linux written in Assembly and C and MS Windows written in Assembly, C and C++)
• JVM written in Assembly, C and C++
• Embedded Systems(cars, caclulators, appliances)
• High performance applications(science/engineering)

Question 2

Imperative Language

Answer 2

• Like Java, it is focused on how a computation should be performed

Question 3

Procedural

Answer 3

• A program is a collection of procedures(functions)
• Focus on actions performed by these procedures
• This is C

Question 4

Object-oriented

Answer 4

• Program is a collection of objects, each with state and operations
• Focus on state of tehse objects
• This is not C

Question 5

Declarative Languages

Answer 5

Focus on what the program should compute rather than how it should compute it

Question 6

Functional Languages(LSH)

Answer 6

Lisp, Scheme, Haskell

Question 7

Dataflow Languages(VLT)

Answer 7

VHDL, Linda, TensorFlow

Question 8

Logic/Constraint-Based

Answer 8

Prolog

Question 9

Markup Languages

Answer 9

HTML, Markdown

Question 10

How we got to C?

Answer 10

• Algol 66 -> BCPL -> B -> C -> C++, Perl; C++ -> Java; C++ & Java -> C#
• Developed along with the Unix operating system(An alternative to developing OS in Assembly)
• More portable, readable, maintainable

Question 11

What’s C(transitions)

Answer 11

• Informal Standard for 10 years
• C89 standard in 1989/1990
• C99 standard in 1999(one we use)
• C11 completed in 2011
• C17 completed in 2017
• Work in C2x is ongoing

Question 12

C Strengths

Answer 12

• Think of C as a thin veneer over the underlying assembly language
• Let’s us do some things we couldn’t do in a higher-level language
• The standard leaves some details implementation-defined, to better exploit hardware. Ex. C has an int type, but its range may depend on compiler/hardware; C doesn’t generally guarantee what uninitialized variables will contain
• C compiles much faster since it is compiled down to hardware’s native machine lanugage

Question 13

C Weaknesses

Answer 13

• C offers very little in protection and security
• C lacks some constructs for managing very large projects

Question 14

Software Tools

Answer 14

• To help write, build, analyze and maintain software
• Coordinate contributions from a team
  Examples: Editors, pretty printers, compilers, linkers, debuggers. code generators, performance analyzors

Question 15

The Common Platform(NCSU)

Answer 15

• Different systems have different processors, compilers, language versions, line termination conventions, etc. so we need to agree on what system to target
• 64-bit Intel PC
• University Linux OS
• gcc compiler suite

Question 16

Commands for reference

Answer 16

Files on Computer to NCSU Shared Drive(sftp)
Terminal to Remote Linux Server(ssh)
NCSU Drive Shared Files to Computer on Campus/NCSU Remote Linux(smb)

Question 17

Sample C Program

Answer 17

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ps52mAqU6IepM0jTIRxM1uVtIvR0R8spKT6Xy_XXDUY/edit?usp=sharing

Question 18

GCC commands to Compile and Execute

Answer 18

gcc -Wall -std=c99 hello.c -o hello
./hello
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ps52mAqU6IepM0jTIRxM1uVtIvR0R8spKT6Xy_XXDUY/edit?usp=sharing

Question 19

Variable Declarations in C

Answer 19

• Variable Declarations look the same as Java
  We have most of the same built-in types, including char, short, int long, float and double. No byte(char instead) and boolean types(C99 gives bool)
• Before C99 standard, local variables had to be declared at the top of function or block.(Some people still code that way)

Question 20

C you already know: C operations, flow of control loops, file scope(in the doc)

Answer 20

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ps52mAqU6IepM0jTIRxM1uVtIvR0R8spKT6Xy_XXDUY/edit?usp=sharing

Question 21

Variable Initializations in C

Answer 21

C doesn’t force you to initialize your local variables and it doesn’t initialize them for you.