C is a very powerful programming language; it is also very versatile. It was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Brian W Kernighan; their book The C programming language continues to be a classic and must-read text. We strongly recommend the use of Kernighan and Ritchie for the readers of this course material.

Historically, FORTRAN has been the programming language of choice for scientific and engineering computing; even today, there are several numerical software which continue the use of FORTRAN. However, we feel that the familiarity with a programming language like C or python is essential; not only these languages can be used for numerical calculations but also for other purposes; for example, the UNIX/Linux operating system has been written in C; there are also several numerical libraries which are written in C and python. C is also one among the five languages that is recommended for developing an expertise with computing (the other four being Java, python, LISP and Perl). Keeping these considerations (as well as our own familiarity) in mind, we have decided to use C for our coding in these notes.