C is a general-purpose programming language that was developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. It is one of the most widely used and influential programming languages in the world, and is used to develop a wide variety of software, including operating systems, device drivers, embedded systems, and high-performance applications.

C is a procedural language, which means that programs are written as a sequence of steps that are executed one after the other. It is also a low-level language, which means that it gives programmers direct access to the underlying hardware. This makes C very powerful and efficient, but it also makes it more difficult to learn and use than some other programming languages.