C is a general-purpose programming language developed in the 1970s. It has become widely used for systems programming tasks like operating systems or embedded systems. C programs are compiled into machine-readable executable code that can be directly executed by a computer's CPU. Key features of C include modularity through functions, portability across platforms, and high performance due to being close to the hardware level. C programs are made up of functions, variables, expressions, and other elements and are compiled in multiple steps from source code to executable file.