1.2.4 - Types of Programming Language

Question 1

What are programming paradigms?

Answer 1

Different approaches to using a programming language to solve a problem.

Question 2

What are imperative programming paradigms?

Answer 2

These are paradigms which clearly specify the action to be performed.

Question 3

What is procedural programming?

Answer 3

This is a type of imperative programming which uses a sequence of instructions which may be contained within procedures.
These instructions are carried out in a step-by-step manner.

Question 4

Why is procedural programming good?

Answer 4

• Applied to a wide range of problems

- Easy to write and interpret

Question 5

What is OOP?

Answer 5

OOP is built on entities called objects formed from classes which have certain attributes and methods. OOP focuses on making programs that are reusable and easy to update and maintain.

Question 6

Why is OOP good? (structure)

Answer 6

OOP is applicable to certain types of problem with lots of reusable components which have similar
characteristics. This is because of inheritance and polymorphism.
It also has a modular structure, meaning classes can be easily maintained and updated.

Question 7

What is declarative programming?

Answer 7

Declarative programming focuses on stating the desired result rather than the exact series of instructions that need to be performed to get to the result.
It is the role of the programming language to determine how best to obtain the
result and the details about how it is obtained are
abstracted from the user.

Question 8

When is declarative programming used?

Answer 8

It is common in expert systems and artificial intelligence.

Question 9

What is functional programming?

Answer 9

Functional programming uses the concept of reusing a set of functions, which form the core of the program. Programs are made up of lines of code consisting of function calls, often combined within each other. Functional programming is closely linked to mathematics.

Question 10

What is logic programming?

Answer 10

Logic languages are also part of the declarative programming paradigm and use code
which defines a set of facts and rules based on the problem.
Queries are used to find
answers to problems.

Question 11

What is structured programming?

Answer 11

Structured programming is a popular subsection of procedural programming in which the
control flow is given by four main programming structures: sequence, selection, iteration and recursion.

Procedural programming is suited to problems that can easily be expressed as a series of instructions using the above constructs.

Question 12

What does sequence mean?

Answer 12

Code is executed line-by-line, from top to bottom.

Question 13

What does selection mean?

Answer 13

A certain block of code is run if a specific condition is met, using IF statements.

Question 14

What does iteration mean?

Answer 14

A block of code is executed a certain number of times or while a condition is met. Iteration uses FOR, WHILE or REPEAT UNTIL loops.

Question 15

What does recursion mean?

Answer 15

Functions are expressed in terms of themselves. Functions are executed, calling themselves, until a certain condition known as a base case (which does not call the function) is met.

Question 16

What is an addressing mode?

Answer 16

This is what specifies how the operand should be interpreted. The addressing mode is part of the opcode.

Question 17

What is immediate addressing?

Answer 17

The operand is the actual value upon which the instruction is to be performed, represented in binary,

Question 18

What is direct addressing?

Answer 18

The operand gives the address which holds the value upon which the instruction is to be performed. Direct addressing is used in LMC.

Question 19

What is indirect addressing?

Answer 19

The operand gives the address of a register which holds another address, where the data is located.

Question 20

What is indexed addressing?

Answer 20

An index register is used, which stores a certain value. The address of the operand is determined by adding the operand to the index register.
This is necessary to add an offset in order to access data stored contiguously in memory such as in arrays.

Question 21

What is the class of an object?

Answer 21

A template for an object, defining it’s state and behaviour.

Question 22

What is the state and behaviour of an object?

Answer 22

State is given by attributes which give an object’s properties.
Behaviour is defined by the methods associated with a class, which describe the actions it can perform.

Question 23

What are setters and getters?

Answer 23

A setter is a method that sets the value of a particular
attribute.
A getter retrieves the value of a given attribute.
They make sure attributes can’t be directly accessed and edited by users (encapsulation)

Question 24

How does encapsulation work?

Answer 24

Attributes are declared as private so can only be altered by public methods.
Every class must also have a constructor method, which is called ‘new’. A constructor
allows a new object to be created.

Question 25

What is inheritance?

Answer 25

A class can inherit from another class.
The subclass (or derived class) will possess all of the methods and attributes of the superclass (or parent class) and can have its own additional properties.

Question 26

Why is inheritance good?

Answer 26

Inheritance allows programmers to effectively reuse certain components and properties while making some changes.

Question 27

How is inheritance expressed

Answer 27

class ______ inherits ____

Question 28

What is polymorphism?

Answer 28

This is a property of OOP which means some objects can behave differently during their class.
This means the same method can produce different results depending on the involved object.

Question 29

What is overriding?

Answer 29

Overriding is redefining a method within a subclass and altering the code so that it
functions differently and produces a different output.

Question 30

What is overloading?

Answer 30

Overloading is passing in different parameters into a method

Question 31

Why is OOP good (principles)?

Answer 31

It requires advance planning to determine how the problem will be broken into classes and how they will link, generating a thorough design with fewer vulnerabilities.
There is a high level of abstraction and once classes are made other programmers don’t need to know the details.

Question 32

Why is OOP bad?

Answer 32

• Difficult to pick up, different style of thinking.
• Not suited to all types of problems - could result in a longer, more inefficient problem where not many sections are repeated.
• Unsuitable for smaller problems.