Chapter 1 Glossary Flashcards
problem solving
The process of formulating a problem, finding a solution, and expressing it.
high-level language
A programming language like Python that is designed to be easy for humans to read and write.
low-level language
A programming language that is designed to be easy for a computer to run; also called “machine language” or “assembly language.”
portability
A property of a program that can run on more than one kind of computer.
interpreter
A program that reads another program and executes it.
prompt
Characters displayed by the interpreter to indicate that it is ready to take input from the user.
program
A set of instructions that specifies a computation.
print statement
An instruction that causes the Python interpreter to display a value on the screen.
operator
A special symbol that represents a simple computation like addition, multiplication, or string concatenation.
value
One of the basic units of data, like a number or string, that a program manipulates.
type
A category of values. This types we have seen so far are integers (type int), floating-point numbers (type float), and strings (type str).
integer
A type that represents whole numbers.
floating-point
A type that represents numbers with fractional parts.
string
A type that represents sequences of characters.
natural language
Any one of the languages that people speak that evolved naturally.
formal language
Any one of the languages that people have designed for specific purposes, such as representing mathematical ideas or computer programs; all programming languages are formal languages.
token
One of the basic elements of the syntactic structure of a program, analogous to a word in a natural language.
syntax
The rules that govern the structure of a program.
parse
To examine a program and analyze the syntactic structure.
bug
An error in a program.
debugging
The process of finding and correcting bugs.
