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Programming Languages > Lecture 1 COPY > Flashcards

Lecture 1 COPY Flashcards

1
Q

Why are different programming languages written?

A

To solve different problems. Different tools for different reasons.

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2
Q

What are some general purpose languages?

A

C++, C

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3
Q

What are the characteristics of abstraction?

A
  1. Encapsulation

2. Information Hiding

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4
Q

What are the types of abstraction?

A
  1. Data

2. Procedural

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5
Q

What does an optimizer do?

A

Places statements pertaining to the same data close to one another in memory.

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6
Q

What are the three language constructs?

A

Repetition, sequence, condition

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7
Q

What percentage of a company’s budget is spent on maintenance vs. on development?

A

80 % on maintenance.

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8
Q

What’s another term for reliability?

A

Data integrity

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9
Q

What is a unit of work?

A

Do the entire unit of work or do nothing. Ex: ATM. Attempts transaction and backs everything out if there is an issue.

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10
Q

What is aliasing?

A

Referring to memory addresses using different types and different symbolic names

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11
Q

What is perfective maintenance?

A

Enhancements

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12
Q

What is protective maintenance?

A

Security

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13
Q

What is adaptive maintenance?

A

Changing technology without changing functionality

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14
Q

What is corrective maintenance?

A

Fixing bugs

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15
Q

Why is compiling programs a cost?

A

Separation of duties. You have individual employees dealing with the build process.

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16
Q

What are the language evaluation criteria?

A

Readability, Writability, Reliability, and Cost

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17
Q

What is reliability?

A

Conformance to specifications

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18
Q

What does overall simplicity mean?

A

A manageable set of features and constructs, minimal feature multiplicity, minimal operator overloading

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19
Q

What is orthogonality?

A

A relatively small set of primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small number of ways. Optimally, every possible combination is legal.

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20
Q

What is abstraction?

A

The ability to define and use complex structures or operations in ways that allow details to be ignored.

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21
Q

What is expressivity?

A

The breadth of ideas that can be represented and communicated in the language.

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22
Q

What is portability?

A

The ease with which programs can be moved from one implementation to another.

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23
Q

What is generality?

A

The applicability to a wide range of applications.

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24
Q

What computer architecture are programming languages developed around?

A

The Von Neumann architecture

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25
Q

When did the Von Neumann architecture come into ues?

A

1940-1950

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26
Q

What are the characteristics of the Von Neumann architecture?

A
  1. Data and programs stored in memory
  2. Memory is separate from CPU
  3. Instructions and data are piped from memory to CPU
  4. Imperative languages match Von Neumann architecture best.
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27
Q

Why do imperative languages match Von Neumann architecture best?

A
  1. Variables model memory cells
  2. Assignment statements model piping
  3. Iteration is efficient
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28
Q

What is the fetch-execute-cycle on Von Neumann architecture computer?

A
  1. Initialize program counter
  2. Repeat forever:
  3. Fetch instruction pointed to by counter
  4. Increment counter
  5. Decode instruction
  6. Execute instruction
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29
Q

What was the programming paradigm in the 1950s/60s?

A

Simple applications, worry about machine efficiency.

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30
Q

What was the program paradigm in the late 60s?

A

People efficiency became important; requiring better readability and control structures.

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31
Q

What was the program paradigm in the late 70s?

A

Went from process oriented to data oriented

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32
Q

What was the programming paradigm in the mid-1980s?

A

Object oriented programming: Data abstraction + inheritance + polymorphism

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33
Q

What are the categories of languages?

A
  1. Imperative
  2. Functional
  3. Logic
  4. Markup/Programming Hybrid
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34
Q

What are imperative languages?

A
  • Variables
  • Assignment statements
  • Iteration
  • Object Oriented Programming
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35
Q

What are functional languages?

A

Primary means of making computations is by applying functions to given parameters

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36
Q

What is object oriented programming?

A

Simplification of data and procedural abstraction and building it into languages.

37
Q

What is range checking?

A

A compiler feature that will prevent you from referencing an element that is out of range of the defined size of an array.

38
Q

What are the language design tradeoffs?

A
  1. Reliability vs. cost of execution
  2. Readability vs. writability
  3. Writability (flexibility) vs. reliability
39
Q

What are the methods of implementation of programming languages?

A
  1. Compilation
  2. Pure interpretation
  3. Hybrid Implementation Systems
40
Q

What are hybrid implementation systems?

A

A compromise between compilers and pure interpreters.

41
Q

What is pure interpretation?

A

Where every line is translated one at a time. It uses more memory and is slower than compilation.

42
Q

What is an example of a hybrid implementation system?

A

Java Bytecode

43
Q

What are the phases of compilation?

A
  1. Lexical Analysis
  2. Syntax Analysis
  3. Semantics Analysis
  4. Code Generation
44
Q

What is lexical analysis?

A

A process that converts characters in the source program into lexical units. This is where the symbol table gets created.

45
Q

What is syntax analysis?

A

Transforms lexical units into parse trees, which represent syntax.

46
Q

What is semantics analysis?

A

Attempts to understand the intention of the programmer, generates intermediate code.

47
Q

How many passes are most compilers?

A

2:

  1. Symbol Table (Syntax)
  2. (Syntax), Intermediate Code, uses symbol table for code generation
48
Q

During which phase in the compilation process can optimization be applied?

A

Semantic Analysis

49
Q

What is a load module?

A

An executable image, the user and system code together

50
Q

What is linking and loading?

A

The process of collecting system program units and linking them to a user program.

51
Q

What is an unresolved reference?

A

When the compiler marks in the symbol table when it is unable to find something

52
Q

What is a linkage editor?

A

Looks in libraries to find reference and updates symbol table with module if found. Otherwise, error out and fail compilation.

53
Q

What is the Von Neumann bottleneck?

A

The connection speed between a computer’s memory and its processor determines the speed of a computer. Since instructions can be executed faster than the speed of the connection, a bottleneck is created.

54
Q

What is a way to get around the Von Neumann bottleneck?

A

Use multiple processors

55
Q

What are the characteristics of Pure Interpretation?

A
  1. No translation (no .exe output)
  2. Easier implementation of programs
  3. Slower execution
  4. Usually requires more space
56
Q

What are the characteristics of hybrid implementation systems?

A
  1. Mix of interpreted/compiled
  2. High level program translated to intermediate language that allows easy interpretation
  3. Faster than pure interpretation
57
Q

What are some examples of Hybrid Implementation Systems?

A

Initial implementations of Java, Perl.

58
Q

What is the Hybrid Implementation Process?

A
  1. Source Program
  2. Lexical Analyzer
  3. Syntax Analyzer
  4. Intermediate code generator
  5. Interpreter
59
Q

What is the Pure Interpretation Process?

A
  1. Source Program
  2. Interpreter
  3. Results
60
Q

Where does the descriptor reside?

A

The symbol table

61
Q

What is a data type?

A

A collection of data objects and a set of predefined operations on those objects

62
Q

What is a descriptor?

A

A collection of the attributes of a variable

63
Q

What is an object?

A

An instance of a user-defined (abstract) data type

64
Q

What are primitive data types?

A

Data types not defined in terms of another set of types

65
Q

T/F - Integer is almost always an exact reflection of the hardware so mapping is trivial

A

True

66
Q

What is the IEEE standard for floating point types?

A

754

67
Q

What happens to the sign of the exponent in floating point data types?

A

It is eliminated to save space

68
Q

What are complex data types?

A

Representation of complex numbers where two floats represent the real and imaginary parts

69
Q

What is packing?

A

In terms of CS, storing information using less memory than designated.

70
Q

What are the attributes of the decimal data type?

A
  • Store a fixed number of decimal digits in BCD
  • Adv: Allow a high degree of accuracy
  • Disadv: Has limited range and wastes memory
71
Q

How are boolean types usually implemented?

A

As bytes

72
Q

What are the attributes of the character data type?

A
  • Stored as numeric coding

- Common codings include ASCII, UCS2 and UCS4. Less common EBCDIC.

73
Q

How are strings stored?

A

As sequences of characters

74
Q

What are the design issues to consider about strings?

A

Static vs dynamic, primitive type or special array

75
Q

How are static strings implemented for processing by a language?

A

As a compile time descriptor

76
Q

How are limited dynamic length strings implemented for processing by a language?

A

May need a runtime descriptor in certain cases, C and C++ don’t

77
Q

How are dynamic length strings implemented for processing by a language?

A

Need a runtime descriptor, alloc/dealloc is biggest issue

78
Q

What are the components of a static string descriptor?

A

String, Length, Address

79
Q

What are the components of a runtime descriptor for limited dynamic strings?

A

String, Maximum Length, Current Length, Address

80
Q

What is an ordinal type?

A

A type in which the range of possible values can be easily associated with the set of positive integers. Are always discrete.

81
Q

What is the maximum number of subscripts in C++?

A

255

82
Q

What are the reasons arrays moved from static to heap?

A

1 Dynamic arrays became more useful and viable
2 More heap memory available in total
3 Better hardware, so heap access is faster
4 Able to reference by address

83
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of range checking?

A

Adv - Reliability. Prevents you from going out of bounds.

Disadv - Performance hit (lots of if statement / branching)

84
Q

When are subscript ranges bound?

A

Compile time, generally

85
Q

When does allocation take place?

A

It depends. Declaration is not executable unless initialization is associated with it.

86
Q

What are two ways you can make rectangular multidimensional arrays jagged?

A

1- Array of arrays

2- Allocate as rectangular, keep track of used cells

87
Q

What is array slicing?

A

Extracting a subset of elements from an array and repackaging them as another array.

88
Q

What is array indexing?

A

Mapping from indices to elements

89
Q

When should allocation be performed?

A

Only when you have to. (lazy allocation)

Programming Languages (3 decks)

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