C is a general purpose programming language ideal for developing firmware and portable applications. It was developed at Bell Labs in the 1970s to write the UNIX operating system. C is fast and versatile, used for both applications and technologies. To program in C, a text editor and compiler are needed. C code uses format specifiers in printf statements to output variables of different data types like int, float, char. Variable names must be unique identifiers and it is best to use descriptive names. Constants are declared with const and assigned a fixed value.