Week 2 - Structured Programs

Question 1

What are procedures and functions?

Answer 1

They are ways of grouping lines of code (blocks) and giving the block a name.

Question 2

What can functions and procedures take?

Answer 2

They both take arguments.

Question 3

How are functions and procedures different?

Answer 3

Functions have one return value of a single type & side-effects, whereas procedures only produce side-effects.

Question 4

Arguments

Answer 4

Data that is passed from one block of code to another (the thing that goes into the brackets of a procedure/function).

The argument is given a name (like a variable name) in the receiving procedure.

Question 5

Why are procedures called?

Answer 5

Because they produce side-effects.

Question 6

What are examples of side-effects?

Answer 6

A side-effect to a procedure can include calling it inside another function, or outputting data to the screen or terminal

Question 7

How are global variables marked?

Answer 7

With a $ sign.

Eg: $a

Question 8

Methods

Answer 8

An OOP term that means both functions and procedures

method()

Question 9

Attributes

Answer 9

Variables and arguments, but also functions or methods that might be used to give values as though you were accessing a variable.

These are used to define a class, where a class is a new data type that we make.
Eg: Attribute like id in HTML to later call onto it.

Question 10

What are classes used for?

Answer 10

Used for creating custom data types.

Question 11

What are the possible scopes in Ruby?

Answer 11

Global, Local & Instance

Question 12

Global Scope

Answer 12

A variable/constant that can be accessed anywhere in the program.

Question 13

Local Scope

Answer 13

A variable/constant that’s only accessible in the block of code where declared

Question 14

Instance Scope (@Shared)

Answer 14

A variable accessible to all procedures and functions under a class.

Question 15

What is debugging code?

Answer 15

Running code and if there are errors, you’re finding them and resolving them.

Question 16

What data type is on the output screen?

Answer 16

String

Question 17

What’s the difference between a parameter and an argument?

Answer 17

Parameter is the code in the brackets when defining a method.
Eg: method(n)

The argument is the value that we pass in place of the parameter/placeholder.
Eg: method(12) will substitute n = 12 and put that value into the function called method.

Question 18

What’s a splat argument? How do we mark it?

Answer 18

Splat arguments tell the program that the method can receive one or more arguments.

They are arguments followed a *.

Question 19

How do you write if a number (m) is divisible by another number (n) in Ruby?

Answer 19

m % n == 0

Question 20

How are blocks different from methods?

Answer 20

Blocks are like nameless methods. They often start with do.