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1.8: Glossary

  • Page ID
    40932
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    problem solving:
    The process of formulating a problem, finding a solution, and expressing it.
    high-level language:
    A programming language like Python that is designed to be easy for humans to read and write.
    low-level language:
    A programming language that is designed to be easy for a computer to run; also called “machine language” or “assembly language”.
    portability:
    A property of a program that can run on more than one kind of computer.
    interpreter:
    A program that reads another program and executes it
    prompt:
    Characters displayed by the interpreter to indicate that it is ready to take input from the user.
    program:
    A set of instructions that specifies a computation.
    print statement:
    An instruction that causes the Python interpreter to display a value on the screen.
    operator:
    A special symbol that represents a simple computation like addition, multiplication, or string concatenation.
    value:
    One of the basic units of data, like a number or string, that a program manipulates.
    type:
    A category of values. The types we have seen so far are integers (type int), floating-point numbers (type float), and strings (type str).
    integer:
    A type that represents whole numbers.
    floating-point:
    A type that represents numbers with fractional parts.
    string:
    A type that represents sequences of characters.
    natural language:
    Any one of the languages that people speak that evolved naturally.
    formal language:
    Any one of the languages that people have designed for specific purposes, such as representing mathematical ideas or computer programs; all programming languages are formal languages.
    token:
    One of the basic elements of the syntactic structure of a program, analogous to a word in a natural language.
    syntax:
    The rules that govern the structure of a program.
    parse:
    To examine a program and analyze the syntactic structure.
    bug:
    An error in a program.
    debugging:
    The process of finding and correcting bugs.

    This page titled 1.8: Glossary is shared under a CC BY-NC 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Allen B. Downey (Green Tea Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

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