C

C n.  1. The third letter of the English alphabet.  2. ASCII
   1000011.  3. The name of a programming language designed by Dennis
   Ritchie during the early 1970s and immediately used to reimplement
   {{UNIX}}; so called because many features derived from an earlier
   compiler named `B' in commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL.
   (BCPL was in turn descended from an earlier Algol-derived language,
   CPL.)  Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing
   C++, there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should
   be named `D' or `P'.  C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs
   after about 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and
   microcomputer applications programming.  See also {languages of
   choice}, {indent style}.

   C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain
   varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines
   all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the
   readability and maintainability of assembly language".