Programming Language Concepts Flashcards
A computer program which translates assembly language to an object file or machine language format.
Assembler
A low-level programming language (difficult for humans, easy for machine) that uses mnemonic opposes, such as mov, sto, and load, to interact directly a computer’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) and registers, used by expert programmers to produce highly efficient and fast programs.
Assembly Language
A notation technique for context-free grammars, often used to describe the syntax language used in computing.
Backus Naur Notation
A family of general-purpose, high level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use.
BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
A universally portable software file compiled from source code that is then translated into machine language by a software interpreter. Java works this way, where a .java file is compiled into a .class file, which contains _________, and then is translated by whatever device executes that file.
Bytecode
A general, all-purpose programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie in the late 60s and early 70s at the AT&T Bell Labs, which became one of the most widely used programming languages of all time.
C
A programming language also developed by AT&T Bell Labs isn’t he late 70s by Bjorne Stroustrup, derived from C, with added object oriented features.
C++
An acronym for common business-oriented language, a complied English-like computer programming languages designed for business use.
COBOL
A term that refers to the source code, or set of instructions found in a computer program.
Code
A section of code in a computer program which is grouped together. Blocks consist of one or more declarations and statements.
Code Block
A computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code written in a programming language (the source language) into another computer language (the target language, often having a binary form known as object code). The most common reason for converting a source code is to create an executable program.
Compiler
The process of transforming source code form a high-level programming language into object code, most typically machine language or bytecode in Java.
Compiling
The code that is the result of the compile process translated from source code, running a program.
Executable code
One of the original high level languages, short for Formula Translation, created by John Backus, to make programming easier for math and science applications.
FORTRAN
A programming language using words and commands easy for humans to understand and organize, but which must be translated into a low-level language like machine language or object code for the computer to understand and execute.
High Level Language
The translation process in some programming languages which executes a program one line at a time, instead of compiling the entire program into one executable file.
Interpreting
A general-purpose computer programming language that is concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, and is designed to run on any platform through the use of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Java
A language easily understood and executed by a computer, like machine language, assembly, or bytecode.
Low Level Language
The language directly understood and executed by a computer, consisting of pure 0s and 1s.
Machine Language
A low-level language easily understood and executed by the computer, the result of a translation process using a compiler or interpreter.
Object Code
A procedural programming language devised and published by Nicklaus Wirth in 1970. Used for education.
Pascal
A formal constructed language to communicate instructions to a computer.
Programming Language
An informal high-level description of the operating principle of a computer program or other algorithm.
Pseudocode
An interpreted, object-oriented, high-level programming language with dynamic semantics.
Python
An event-drive programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft, first released in 1991, to be relatively easy to learn and use to create GUI based programs.
Visual Basic
A diagram system, sometimes referred to as railroad diagrams, which is a way to represent a context-free grammar.
Syntax Diagram
The rules in a scripted language that control punctuation, spelling, and grammar, such as ending a statement with a semicolon, requiring matching braces or parenthesis, and so on.
Syntax
A method that has no return type. A return statement may be used, but no data will be returned to the calling method.
Void Method
A markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format which is both human-readable and machine-readable.
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
