Final Exam Review Flashcards
Debugging
The process of ensuring a program is free of errors (bugs)
Java
High-level, object oriented programming language frequently used for web-based applications
Fortran
High-level programming language used for mathematical, scientific, and engineering applications
Still used today for high-performance computing tasks (weather forecast)
COBOL
Designed for business transaction processing
Makes extensive use of modules and submodules
Being phased out in many organizations
Y2K scare
Pseudocode
Uses English-like statements to outline the logic of a program
Compiler
Language translator that converts an entire program into machine language before executing it
Flowchart
Program flowcharts show graphically step-by-step how a computer program will process data
Stage
The Stage in Scratch represents the viewable/playable area of a program
It is 480px wide by 360px tall, and its size cannot be changed
Underlying the stage is an XY grid which can be used to refer to a position on the stage
The programmer can change the appearance of the stage using Backdrops
Sprite
Interactive objects in your scratch program are referred to as Sprites (a term which comes from Game Development)
Every Scratch program begins with the default sprite (MIT’s Scratch Mascot), which can easily be deleted with the x in the upper left corner
Adding new Sprites can be in the same methods as backdrops, except the camera
Argument
Many of the code blocks in scratch have arguments
An argument is an area in a block which accepts programmer input or another block
Arguments in scratch can be one of several types, which depend on the block containing the argument - numeric insert, string insert, built-in drop-down list, boolean block insert, built-in color selector.
Block
Blocks are puzzle-piece shapes that are used to create code in Scratch
The blocks connect to each other like a jigsaw puzzle
Each data type (event, command, reported value, reported boolean, or script end) has its own shape and a specifically shaped slot for it to be inserted into
This prevents syntax errors, since pieces will only fit where they are allowed to go
Script
Series of connected blocks are called scripts
Comments
Comments allow a programmer to put descriptive text in their program that is ignored during execution
They provide other people looking at your program a better understanding of what your code is doing
They can also be useful when you return to code after a long time away to remind yourself what you did
Comments are added in scratch by right click in the scripts tab
They can be adjusted horizontally and vertically
They can float free, or be attached to a particular code block
Stranded Code
Any code blocks in your scripts tab that aren’t attached to a Hat Block (event), or another block that is attached to a Hat Block will never get executed
Make sure not to leave the code stranded
Byte
Bit: the smallest unit of data that a binary computer can recognize (a single 1 or 0)
A byte is 8 bits
Byte terminology is used to express the size of documents and other files, programs, etc.
Nibble
Groups of four bits are called a nibble
Hexadecimal notation
Hexadecimals are made of 16 digits (0-9, A-F)
Base
a number used as the basis of a numeration scale.?????
Available numbers in a numbering system (0-9)
Signed Magnitude Representation
A type of signed binary number representation
Sign-magnitude doesn’t work - try adding a number to its negative
If the binary number is unsigned then all the bits can be used to represent the number.
The representation of a signed binary number is commonly referred to as the sign-magnitude notation and if the sign bit is “0”, the number is positive. If the sign bit is “1”, then the number is negative.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Character encoding standard for electronic communication, represents text in computers
Octal Numbers
The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the base-8 number system, and uses the digits 0 to 7. Octal numerals can be made from binary numerals by grouping consecutive binary digits into groups of three (starting from the right).
Legibility
A measure of how easy it is to distinguish one letter from another in a particular typeface
Readability
How easy it is to read words, phrases, blocks of copy such as a web page
Discoverability
The quality of being easy to find via a search engine, within an application, or on a website.
Intelligibility
The information a computer retrieves is comprehensible to another computer system or a human viewer
Regression Bug
For some reason in Windows 10 Microsoft actually made scaling worse than windows 8.1 – this is a regression bug – when some new feature broke the old (properly working) way
Triangle Mesh
A type of polygon mesh in computer graphics. It comprises a set of triangles(typically in three dimensions) that are connected by their common edges or corners. The mesh components are vertices, edges, and triangles.
Geometric Primitive
The term in computer graphics and CAD systems is used in various senses, with the common meaning of the simplest geometric objects that the system can handle.
Hypertext
Software system that links topics on the screen to related information and graphics, which are typically accessed by a point-and-click method
Archie
World’s first search engine
Cloudware
Software that runs on a remote Web server rather than on a mobile computing device, personal computer, or traditional on-premises application server
E-commerce
Commercial transactions conducted electronically on the internet
Carpal tunnel syndrome
A common condition that causes pain, numbness, and tingling in the hand and arm
Digital divide
The gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet, and those who do not
Green Computing
The environmentally responsible and eco-friendly use of computers and their resources. In broader terms, it is also defined as the study of designing, manufacturing/engineering, using and disposing of computing devices in a way that reduces their environmental impact.
Reasoning
The ability to apply the knowledge to solve problems
Control mechanism that determine which operation to apply to particular problem
Training Data
The set of instances with a known target to be used to fit an ML model
Capability of an Al system
Store knowledge
Applying the knowledge stored to solve problems
Acquire new knowledge through experience
Machine Learning
Machine learning is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead.
Supervised Learning
The machine learning task of learning a function that maps an input to an output based on example input-output pairs. It infers a function from labeled training data consisting of a set of training examples.
Decision Tree
Decision tree learning is a method for approximating discrete-valued target functions
The learned function is represented by a decision tree
Commonly used in data mining
Decision trees classify
instances or examples by starting at the root of the tree and moving through a leaf node
Neural Network
a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system.
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) attempt to simulate the behavior of these cells
A perceptron is the simplest neural network possible: a computational model of a single neuron
