Ranjan

Yes, it can be replaced...there are companies working on R&D to find a similar language. C language as of now do not have hold or control to execute on multi-core processor environment. There is already a challenge to find out a language which works better on multi-threaded and multi-core environment. However the cost to replace C will be huge ..especially when most system softwares are written using C.

C is just a language, it is not machine independent because the compilers that you use for C is very much machine dependent. To make you understand in a simple manner - When a japanese person comes to India , he may need a Indian translator (may be to hindi) and when the same person goes to Chine, he may need another translator for chinese. Here the translators are like compilers. Hence the platform like x86 or ARM hardwares will need a different type of C compiler. It is job of compilers to make it machine oriented and as a language it can be never be machine oriented or independent. The same feature is called portability because most C programs can be cross-compiled for different platforms - x86 or ARM etc. Read more about cross-compilation , you can use code blocks on windows to do so.

Its just a myth that C is an easy language or a base language . Many or Most people do not get into depth of this language especially in India. Here is the answer for the ques :- 1. C is a middle level language good for system programming as well as low level driver programming especially powered with pointer and the keyword 'volatile' 2. C language was used for system programmers, OS developers and the Linux community due to its high portability and compiler availability. Also writing new compilers for different processors were easier in middle level language like C. 3. C language has a very wide application compared to other languages for example the Linux kernel is written in C, the Compilers of high level languages are written in C and the git scm tool is also written in C language - you can see the diversity of its usage. 4. You dont change the OS code more often hence C language was picked up by industry also they again needed the C programmers to keep going and it became a circle especially all OS written in C language hence it became system programmers favorite.

It depends which platform you are referring to, If its windows - registry settings can help you out, however if its linux based - first step would be to look for any sysfs entry or IOCTL if they can help the application to do the job. However you can access the USB controller register to do so, however this can be done from the userspace only if the linux kernel is build with dev mem option.