WEEK 2.10

Question 1

programming/coding

Answer 1

consists of instructing a computer to perform tasks

Question 2

program/algorithm

Answer 2

sequence of instructions which maniputes data

Question 3

coding languages

Answer 3

way of communicating with computer to code

Question 4

low-level language

Answer 4

language whose instructions are close/identical to processor’s own instructions

Question 5

high-level language

Answer 5

language whose instructions resemble English and are far from the computer’s own language

Question 6

translation method from high-level language to computer

Answer 6

• compilers
• interpreters

Question 7

compiler

Answer 7

translate whole program into machine code, then program can be executed

Question 8

interpreters

Answer 8

translate and execute program into machine code, one instruction at a time

Question 9

trade-off between instruction set size and program length

Answer 9

the larger the instruction set of a language, the smaller the size of a program for a given task

Question 10

low-level language instruction set size

Answer 10

small

Question 11

high-level language instruction set size

Answer 11

large

Question 12

simplest coding language

Answer 12

• Hao Wang’s register machine
• only three instructions: Inc, Deb, End
• sufficient to process any computation

Question 13

register machine

Answer 13

idealised, imaginary (and perfectly possible) computer that consists of nothing but a finite number of registers and a processing unit

Question 14

registers

Answer 14

memory locations where numbers are stored

Question 15

Inc n,m

Answer 15

increase value of register by n and go to step m

Question 16

Deb n,m,p

Answer 16

if value of register is n>0, decrease value of register by 1 and go to step m, else go to step p

Question 17

End

Answer 17

end the program

Question 18

special purpose language

Answer 18

domain specific, can only carry out a restricted set of tasks specific to that domain (e.g. HTML)

Question 19

general purpose language

Answer 19

domain neutral, can carry out any computable task (e.g. Python), Turing complete

Question 20

Turing complete

Answer 20

allow the creation of programs that can emulate any machine

Question 21

control structures

Answer 21

• instructions that control program’s behaviour and flow
• 2 types: selection and repetition structures

Question 22

selection structures

Answer 22

• produce decisions and branching
• employ logical condition
• e.g. if-then

Question 23

repetition structures

Answer 23

produce loops where the same part of the code runs more than once over distinct values (e.g. for, while)

Question 24

Python

Answer 24

• general-purpose programming language that comes with both an interpreter and a compiler
• widely used because allows users to code easily and simply

Question 25

libraries

Answer 25

• made up of modules
• used by programming languages
• offer supplementary collections of functions