This document provides an introduction to the C programming language. It discusses the history and development of C, describing it as a mid-level language that offers both the speed of low-level languages and the ease of use of high-level languages. The document then outlines the typical development cycle for a C program, including writing source code, compiling, testing and debugging. It emphasizes that the source code is written as text in a file, then compiled into a program that the computer can execute.