C is a general-purpose programming language developed in the early 1970s. It was designed to be compiled using a minimal compiler for portability. C is still widely used today due to its speed, flexibility and ability to access low-level hardware which makes it suitable for system programming tasks like operating systems, language compilers, databases etc. The document provides an overview of the history and evolution of C, why it is still useful, basic C programming concepts like variables, data types, expressions and operators.