What is it
C is a low-level, procedural programming language that gives direct control over memory through pointers, with no automatic garbage collection — undergraduate study covers memory management, pointers, and how high-level language features are actually implemented underneath.
Why it matters
Learning C forces a genuine understanding of how computers actually manage memory and execute instructions — knowledge that remains valuable even when working in higher-level languages, since it explains what's really happening beneath the abstractions.
Exam tip
Draw a diagram of memory (stack and heap) when working through pointer problems rather than trying to track addresses mentally — pointer arithmetic errors are the single most common source of bugs in C, and visualising memory prevents most of them.
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