Subroutine
In computer programming, a function (also procedure, method, subroutine, routine, or subprogram) is a callable unit of software logic that has a well-defined interface and behavior and can be invoked multiple times. Callable units provide a powerful programming tool. The primary purpose is to allow for the decomposition of a large and/or complicated problem into chunks that have relatively low cognitive load and to assign the chunks meaningful names (unless they are anonymous). Judicious application can reduce the cost of developing and maintaining software, while increasing its quality and reliability. Callable units are present at multiple levels of abstraction in the programming environment. For example, a programmer may write a function in source code that is compiled to machine code that implements similar semantics. There is a callable unit in the source code and an associated one in the machine code, but they are different kinds of callable units with different impl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Call Stack
In computer science, a call stack is a Stack (abstract data type), stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines and block (programming), inline blocks of a computer program. This type of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to simply the "stack". Although maintenance of the call stack is important for the proper functioning of most software, the details are normally hidden and automatic in high-level programming languages. Many computer instruction sets provide special instructions for manipulating stacks. A call stack is used for several related purposes, but the main reason for having one is to keep track of the point to which each active subroutine should return control when it finishes executing. An active subroutine is one that has been called, but is yet to complete execution, after which control should be handed back to the point of call. Such activatio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Wheeler (British Computer Scientist)
David John Wheeler (9 February 1927 – 13 December 2004) was an English computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge. Education Wheeler was born in Birmingham, England, the second of the three children of (Agnes) Marjorie, ''née'' Gudgeon, and Arthur Wheeler, a press tool maker, engineer, and proprietor of a small shopfitting firm. He was educated at a local primary school in Birmingham and then went on to King Edward VI Camp Hill School after winning a scholarship in 1938. His education was disrupted by World War II, and he completed his sixth form studies at Hanley High School. In 1945 he gained a scholarship to study the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1948. He was awarded the world's first PhD in computer science in 1951. Career Wheeler's contributions to the field included work on the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) in the 1950s and the Burrows–Wheeler t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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COBOL
COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. Many large financial institutions were developing new systems in the language as late as 2006, but most programming in COBOL today is purely to maintain existing applications. Programs are being moved to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages, or replaced with other software. COBOL was designed in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC, designed by Grace Hopper. It was created as part of a U.S. Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Macro (computer Science)
In computer programming, a macro (short for "macro instruction"; ) is a rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input should be mapped to a replacement output. Applying a macro to an input is known as macro expansion. The input and output may be a sequence of lexical tokens or characters, or a syntax tree. Character macros are supported in software applications to make it easy to invoke common command sequences. Token and tree macros are supported in some programming languages to enable code reuse or to extend the language, sometimes for domain-specific languages. Macros are used to make a sequence of computing instructions available to the programmer as a single program statement, making the programming task less tedious and less error-prone. Thus, they are called "macros" because a "big" block of code can be expanded from a "small" sequence of characters. Macros often allow positional or keyword parameters that dictate what the conditional assembler program gen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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C (programming Language)
C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the targeted Central processing unit, CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems code (especially in Kernel (operating system), kernels), device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its use in application software has been decreasing. C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems. A successor to the programming language B (programming language), B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used programming langu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kathleen Antonelli
Kathleen Rita Antonelli ( McNulty; formerly Mauchly; 12 February 1921 – 20 April 2006), known as Kay McNulty, was an Irish computer programmer and one of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic digital computers. The other five ENIAC programmers were Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Frances Spence, Marlyn Meltzer, and Jean Bartik. Early life and education She was born Kathleen Rita McNulty in Feymore, part of the small village of Creeslough in what was then a ''Gaeltacht'' area (Irish-speaking region) of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, on February 12, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. She was the third of six children of James and Anne (née Nelis) McNulty. On the night of her birth, her father, an Irish Republican Army training officer, was arrested and imprisoned in Derry Gaol for two years as he was a suspected member of the IRA. On his release, the family emigrated to the Un ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Object-oriented Programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and implemented in code). In OOP, computer programs are designed by making them out of objects that interact with one another. Many of the most widely used programming languages (such as C++, Java, and Python) support object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree, typically as part of multiple paradigms in combination with others such as imperative programming and declarative programming. Significant object-oriented languages include Ada, ActionScript, C++, Common Lisp, C#, Dart, Eiffel, Fortran 2003, Haxe, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Logo, MATLAB, Objective-C, Object Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Raku, Ruby, Scala, SIMSCRIPT, Simula, Smalltalk, Swift, Vala and Visual Basic.NET. History The idea of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first Computer programming, programmable, Electronics, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was the first to have them all. It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming. ENIAC was designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert to calculate artillery external ballistics, firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory (which later became a part of the United States Army Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory). However, its first program was a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon. ENIAC was completed in 1945 and first put to work for practical purposes on December 10, 1945.* ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15, 1946, having cost $487,000 (), and called a "Giant Brain" by the press. It had ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Class (computer Programming)
In object-oriented programming, a class defines the shared aspects of objects created from the class. The capabilities of a class differ between programming languages, but generally the shared aspects consist of state ( variables) and behavior ( methods) that are each either associated with a particular object or with all objects of that class. Object state can differ between each instance of the class whereas the class state is shared by all of them. The object methods include access to the object state (via an implicit or explicit parameter that references the object) whereas class methods do not. If the language supports inheritance, a class can be defined based on another class with all of its state and behavior plus additional state and behavior that further specializes the class. The specialized class is a ''sub-class'', and the class it is based on is its ''superclass''. Attributes Object lifecycle As an instance of a class, an object is constructed from a class via '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Computer Programming
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writing source code, code in one or more programming languages. Programmers typically use high-level programming languages that are more easily intelligible to humans than machine code, which is directly executed by the central processing unit. Proficient programming usually requires expertise in several different subjects, including knowledge of the Domain (software engineering), application domain, details of programming languages and generic code library (computing), libraries, specialized algorithms, and Logic#Formal logic, formal logic. Auxiliary tasks accompanying and related to programming include Requirements analysis, analyzing requirements, Software testing, testing, debugging (investigating and fixing problems), imple ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maurice Wilkes
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010) was an English computer scientist who designed and helped build the EDSAC, Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored-program computers, and who invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge. Early life, education, and military service Wilkes was born in Dudley, Worcestershire, England the only child of Ellen (Helen), née Malone (1885–1968) and Vincent Joseph Wilkes (1887–1971), an accounts clerk at the estate of the Earl of Dudley. He grew up in Stourbridge, West Midlands, and was educated at King Edward VI College, Stourbridge. During his school years he was introduced to amateur radio by his chemistry teacher. He studied the Mathematical Tripos at St John's College, Cambr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Programming Language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features such as a type system, Variable (computer science), variables, and mechanisms for Exception handling (programming), error handling. An Programming language implementation, implementation of a programming language is required in order to Execution (computing), execute programs, namely an Interpreter (computing), interpreter or a compiler. An interpreter directly executes the source code, while a compiler produces an executable program. Computer architecture has strongly influenced the design of programming languages, with the most common type (imperative languages—which implement operations in a specified order) developed to perform well on the popular von Neumann architecture. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |