Unit #31 Objectives: Programming: Basic Concepts

The objective of unit Programming: Basic Concepts is to learn to recognize and understand the 18 key unit vocabulary terms. This is accomplished by completing the readings and other activities.

Unit Vocabulary

Below is a list of key vocabulary terms in this unit. You can also Print out the vocabulary list.

a data structure such as a variable that holds other variables in a particular order; For example: $a = ($b, $c, $d)

The programmer decided to store all the variables in an array to be more logical.

a property of a data object, such as order, size, or color

The web designer could not remember the name of the table background cell color attribute and had to look it up in his book.

a sequence of instructions set to be repeated a specified amount of times.

the for loop ran until the value of "x" was greater than 100.

a named sequence of procedural code statements that perform a certain task

The CS student spent all night working on a function to compute the average rainfall in Alaska.

usable anywhere in a program

The veteran programmer said using global scope variables is easier but sometimes less secure.

an instruction in older procedural programming languages that specifies that the instruction execution is to jump to specified location, normally a line number

The Computing 101 user didn't know a GOTO statement from a FOR/NEXT loop.

a decision making process wherein a block of code may or may not be executed based on pre-existing condition

The professor told us the heart of the program logic was simply a long line of if/else statements.

usable only in a limited section of program text such as a function

For security reasons the bank password variable had a local scope and was confined to a single function.

a value from which an operator derives another value

"2" and "1" are examples of an operand in the equation "2 + 1 = 3".

a symbol that represents a arithmetical calculation.

The "+" is the operator in the mathematical expression "1 + 3 = 4".

a piece of data that is passed into a program, subroutine, or function call

the program returned a fatal error because a required parameter was missing.

a string that describes or matches a set of strings, according to certain syntax rules

Search engines use regular expressions to match many kinds of similar words, even misspelled ones.

a sentence of code in a programming language, usually ending with a semi-colon

a computer program is a collection of valid statements.

a series of letters and/or numbers

The teacher asked us to type a search string into the Google text box and press "Search".

an independent block of code, separate from the main program, which performs a specific task necessary to the program

The Pascal software program was buggy due an incorrectly performing subroutine.

a block of code or function causing a program to change its default behavior

The programmer preferred using a switch statement to many if/else statements.

a symbol used to represent data which can be changed while the program is running.

Without variables, programs would not be able to accept user input.

a sequence of instructions set to continue until a certain expression is false

The while loop continued until the value of "x" was greater than "y".