C is a very powerful language, however, there has not been much of a demand in the marketplace looking for C programmers.  Nevertheless, why should a computer scientist, information technologist, software engineer, programmer or student learn C?

As the chart shows, the C language is a good foundational language for learning other languages, which are based on C.  In fact, many of the later languages are themselves written in C.  This includes Perl, Ruby, Php, Java virtual machine (JVM), Python, just to name a few.

There are many shared programming syntax between C and the other languages, control structures, data types and so forth.  Even though C is a compiled language which requires more steps to produce a working program, it is a very versatile language and an efficient language in producing fast speed programs.  C lets you manipulate memory and write compact software that speeds up processing times.

C was written for an operating system called Unix(tm) and as such all the utilities that make an efficient operating system such as Unix are built with C.  The Linux operating system kernel that runs on PCs (a Unix variant) is also written in C.  The Windows Vista kernel is also written in C.  As you can see, C is a robust language and as such serves as a precursor to many derived languages such as C++ and Java.