C Programming Language

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What are some popular applications that use C? (programming.dev)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey, so I've been searching the web for a while for some popular applications that use C. All that I can find so far is, Git, Vim, Linux, and Unix. I also know the Windows kernel uses it a little bit, but that's it. Does anyone know some popular apps that use C? Doesn't have to be programming related, just an actual app that's written in C? Sorry if this question sounds redundant or anything.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I know you mean software applications, but another very common application of C is almost any device that uses a microcontroller unit (which is probably dozens of things you own right now). It is incredibly adept at interfacing with processing units at a level close to the metal.

That’s also why you’ll see OS kernels and low level system tools and libs in C as well. It provides a good balance of functionality and abstraction so you can scaffold from register manipulation and interrupt functions up to high level code very quickly.

It also provides a good application binary interface (standards of interoperation with other languages) so you’ll find a lot of applications may be written in C++, Java, Python, etc. but they use a decent amount of core functionality implemented in C.