Portal:Computer programming
Wikipedia portal for content related to Computer programming / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portal maintenance status: (September 2019)
|
The Computer Programming Portal
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writing 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 application domain, details of programming languages and generic code libraries, specialized algorithms, and formal logic.
Auxiliary tasks accompanying and related to programming include analyzing requirements, testing, debugging (investigating and fixing problems), implementation of build systems, and management of derived artifacts, such as programs' machine code. While these are sometimes considered programming, often the term software development is used for this larger overall process – with the terms programming, implementation, and coding reserved for the writing and editing of code per se. Sometimes software development is known as software engineering, especially when it employs formal methods or follows an engineering design process. (Full article...)
Selected articles - load new batch
- Image 1
The history of computing in the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, when the country began to develop its Small Electronic Calculating Machine (MESM) at the Kiev Institute of Electrotechnology in Feofaniya. Initial ideological opposition to cybernetics in the Soviet Union was overcome by a Khrushchev era policy that encouraged computer production.
By the early 1970s, the uncoordinated work of competing government ministries had left the Soviet computer industry in disarray. Due to lack of common standards for peripherals and lack of digital storage capacity the Soviet Union's technology significantly lagged behind the West's semiconductor industry. The Soviet government decided to abandon development of original computer designs and encouraged cloning of existing Western systems (e.g. the 1801 CPU series was scrapped in favor of the PDP-11 ISA by the early 1980s).
Soviet industry was unable to mass-produce computers to acceptable quality standards and locally manufactured copies of Western hardware were unreliable. As personal computers spread to industries and offices in the West, the Soviet Union's technological lag increased. (Full article...) - Image 2
Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
He is the author of MINIX, a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and has written multiple computer science textbooks regarded as standard texts in the field. He regards his teaching job as his most important work. Since 2004 he has operated Electoral-vote.com, a website dedicated to analysis of polling data in federal elections in the United States. (Full article...) - Image 3
Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal of specialized hardware and software has been developed, with the displays of most devices being driven by computer graphics hardware. It is a vast and recently developed area of computer science. The phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers Verne Hudson and William Fetter of Boeing. It is often abbreviated as CG, or typically in the context of film as computer generated imagery (CGI). The non-artistic aspects of computer graphics are the subject of computer science research.
Some topics in computer graphics include user interface design, sprite graphics, rendering, ray tracing, geometry processing, computer animation, vector graphics, 3D modeling, shaders, GPU design, implicit surfaces, visualization, scientific computing, image processing, computational photography, scientific visualization, computational geometry and computer vision, among others. The overall methodology depends heavily on the underlying sciences of geometry, optics, physics, and perception.
Computer graphics is responsible for displaying art and image data effectively and meaningfully to the consumer. It is also used for processing image data received from the physical world, such as photo and video content. Computer graphics development has had a significant impact on many types of media and has revolutionized animation, movies, advertising, and video games, in general. (Full article...) - Image 4Information privacy is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. It is also known as data privacy or data protection. (Full article...)
- Image 5
In computer science and computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, the description may include the instruction set architecture design, microarchitecture design, logic design, and implementation. (Full article...) - Image 6Forth is a stack-oriented programming language and interactive integrated development environment designed by Charles H. "Chuck" Moore and first used by other programmers in 1970. Although not an acronym, the language's name in its early years was often spelled in all capital letters as FORTH. The FORTH-79 and FORTH-83 implementations, which were not written by Moore, became de facto standards, and an official technical standard of the language was published in 1994 as ANS Forth. A wide range of Forth derivatives existed before and after ANS Forth. The free and open-source software Gforth implementation is actively maintained, as are several commercially supported systems.
Forth typically combines a compiler with an integrated command shell, where the user interacts via subroutines called words. Words can be defined, tested, redefined, and debugged without recompiling or restarting the whole program. All syntactic elements, including variables, operators, and control flow, are defined as words. A stack is used to pass parameters between words, leading to a Reverse Polish Notation style.
For much of Forth's existence, the standard technique was to compile to threaded code, which can be interpreted faster than bytecode. One of the early benefits of Forth was size: an entire development environment—including compiler, editor, and user programs—could fit in memory on an 8-bit or similarly limited system. No longer constrained by space, there are modern implementations that generate optimized machine code like other language compilers. The relative simplicity of creating a basic Forth system has led to many personal and proprietary variants, such as the custom Forth used to implement the bestselling 1986 video game Starflight from Electronic Arts. (Full article...) - Image 7
C++ (/ˈsiː plʌs plʌs/, pronounced "C plus plus" and sometimes abbreviated as CPP) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programming language, it has since expanded significantly over time; , C++ has object-oriented, generic, and functional features, in addition to facilities for low-level memory manipulation for systems like microcomputers or to make operating systems like Linux or Windows. It is usually implemented as a compiled language, and many vendors provide C++ compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, LLVM, Microsoft, Intel, Embarcadero, Oracle, and IBM.
C++ was designed with systems programming and embedded, resource-constrained software and large systems in mind, with performance, efficiency, and flexibility of use as its design highlights. C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications, video games, servers (e.g., e-commerce, web search, or databases), and performance-critical applications (e.g., telephone switches or space probes).
C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2020 as ISO/IEC 14882:2020 (informally known as C++20). The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by the C++03, C++11, C++14, and C++17 standards. The current C++20 standard supersedes these with new features and an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979 as an extension of the C language; he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C that also provided high-level features for program organization. Since 2012, C++ has been on a three-year release schedule with C++23 as the next planned standard. (Full article...) - Image 8In computer systems a loader is the part of an operating system that is responsible for loading programs and libraries. It is one of the essential stages in the process of starting a program, as it places programs into memory and prepares them for execution. Loading a program involves either memory-mapping or copying the contents of the executable file containing the program instructions into memory, and then carrying out other required preparatory tasks to prepare the executable for running. Once loading is complete, the operating system starts the program by passing control to the loaded program code.
All operating systems that support program loading have loaders, apart from highly specialized computer systems that only have a fixed set of specialized programs. Embedded systems typically do not have loaders, and instead, the code executes directly from ROM or similar. In order to load the operating system itself, as part of booting, a specialized boot loader is used. In many operating systems, the loader resides permanently in memory, though some operating systems that support virtual memory may allow the loader to be located in a region of memory that is pageable.
In the case of operating systems that support virtual memory, the loader may not actually copy the contents of executable files into memory, but rather may simply declare to the virtual memory subsystem that there is a mapping between a region of memory allocated to contain the running program's code and the contents of the associated executable file. (See memory-mapped file.) The virtual memory subsystem is then made aware that pages with that region of memory need to be filled on demand if and when program execution actually hits those areas of unfilled memory. This may mean parts of a program's code are not actually copied into memory until they are actually used, and unused code may never be loaded into memory at all. (Full article...) - Image 9
Yoshua Bengio OC FRS FRSC (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université de Montréal and scientific director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA).
Bengio received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award (often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing"), together with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, for their work on deep learning. Bengio, Hinton, and LeCun are sometimes referred to as the "Godfathers of AI" and "Godfathers of Deep Learning". As of November 21 2023, he has the highest h-index of any computer scientist. (Full article...) - Image 10Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".
Perl was developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions. Perl originally was not capitalized and the name was changed to being capitalized by the time Perl 4 was released. The latest release is Perl 5, first released in 1994. From 2000 to October 2019 a sixth version of Perl was in development; the sixth version's name was changed to Raku. Both languages continue to be developed independently by different development teams which liberally borrow ideas from each other.
Perl borrows features from other programming languages including C, sh, AWK, and sed. It provides text processing facilities without the arbitrary data-length limits of many contemporary Unix command line tools. Perl is a highly expressive programming language: source code for a given algorithm can be short and highly compressible. (Full article...) - Image 11
C# (/ˌsiː ˈʃɑːrp/ see SHARP) is a general-purpose high-level programming language supporting multiple paradigms. C# encompasses static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines.
The C# programming language was designed by Anders Hejlsberg from Microsoft in 2000 and was later approved as an international standard by Ecma (ECMA-334) in 2002 and ISO/IEC (ISO/IEC 23270 and 20619) in 2003. Microsoft introduced C# along with .NET Framework and Visual Studio, both of which were closed-source. At the time, Microsoft had no open-source products. Four years later, in 2004, a free and open-source project called Mono began, providing a cross-platform compiler and runtime environment for the C# programming language. A decade later, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code (code editor), Roslyn (compiler), and the unified .NET platform (software framework), all of which support C# and are free, open-source, and cross-platform. Mono also joined Microsoft but was not merged into .NET.
the most recent stable version of the language is C# 12.0, which was released in 2023 in .NET 8.0. (Full article...) - Image 12
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke. All Lovelace's half-siblings, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. He died in Greece when Ada was eight. Her mother was anxious about her upbringing and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in him, naming her two sons Byron and Gordon. Upon her death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.
Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". (Full article...) - Image 13Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced S-Q-L; historically "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data, i.e., data incorporating relations among entities and variables.
Introduced in the 1970s, SQL offered two main advantages over older read–write APIs such as ISAM or VSAM. Firstly, it introduced the concept of accessing many records with one single command. Secondly, it eliminates the need to specify how to reach a record, i.e., with or without an index.
Originally based upon relational algebra and tuple relational calculus, SQL consists of many types of statements, which may be informally classed as sublanguages, commonly: Data query Language (DQL), Data Definition Language (DDL), Data Control Language (DCL), and Data Manipulation Language (DML). (Full article...) - Image 14
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (/ˈælɡərɪðəm/ ⓘ) is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing. More advanced algorithms can use conditionals to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making) and deduce valid inferences (referred to as automated reasoning), achieving automation eventually. Using human characteristics as descriptors of machines in metaphorical ways was already practiced by Alan Turing with terms such as "memory", "search" and "stimulus".
In contrast, a heuristic is an approach to problem-solving that may not be fully specified or may not guarantee correct or optimal results, especially in problem domains where there is no well-defined correct or optimal result. For example, social media recommender systems rely on heuristics in such a way that, although widely characterized as "algorithms" in 21st-century popular media, cannot deliver correct results due to the nature of the problem.
As an effective method, an algorithm can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time and in a well-defined formal language for calculating a function. Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty), the instructions describe a computation that, when executed, proceeds through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output" and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate random input. (Full article...) - Image 15Mya was an intelligent personal assistant under development by Motorola. Proposed features for the program included the ability to read emails and answer questions 24 hours a day. Mya was intended to work with an internet service Motorola was developing called Myosphere, and was planned to be a paid service that would eventually be used by other mobile carriers. A female computer-generated character was created to represent Mya in advertising. While the quality of the character's animation was praised, it received criticism for being over sexualised.
Both the character and the program were announced to the public via an advertisement in March 2000, though the program was not ready for use at that time. Despite the announcement generating a considerable amount of attention, little was heard regarding the project in subsequent months. The program was never officially released nor cancelled, though the trademarks for both Myosphere and Mya were abandoned by Motorola in 2002. The name Mya was believed to be a play on the words 'My assistant'. (Full article...)
Selected images
- Image 1Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics.
- Image 2Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. This graph represents less than 30% of the Class C networks reachable by the data collection program in early 2005.
- Image 3This image (when viewed in full size, 1000 pixels wide) contains 1 million pixels, each of a different color.
- Image 4GNOME Shell, GNOME Clocks, Evince, gThumb and GNOME Files at version 3.30, in a dark theme
- Image 5Partial view of the Mandelbrot set. Step 1 of a zoom sequence: Gap between the "head" and the "body" also called the "seahorse valley".
- Image 7Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.
- Image 8A lone house. An image made using Blender 3D.
- Image 10Grace Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960. Grace Brewster Murray: American mathematician and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who was a pioneer in developing computer technology, helping to devise UNIVAC I. the first commercial electronic computer, and naval applications for COBOL (common-business-oriented language).
- Image 12Deep Blue was a chess-playing expert system run on a unique purpose-built IBM supercomputer. It was the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Photo taken at the Computer History Museum.
- Image 14A view of the GNU nano Text editor version 6.0
- Image 15Margaret Hamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project.
- Image 16A head crash on a modern hard disk drive
- Image 17Output from a (linearised) shallow water equation model of water in a bathtub. The water experiences 5 splashes which generate surface gravity waves that propagate away from the splash locations and reflect off of the bathtub walls.
- Image 18An IBM Port-A-Punch punched card
Did you know? - load more entries
- ... that the Gale–Shapley algorithm was used to assign medical students to residencies long before its publication by Gale and Shapley?
- ... that the study of selection algorithms has been traced to an 1883 work of Lewis Carroll on how to award second place in single-elimination tournaments?
- ... that Makoto Soejima is the only International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist with a perfect score to have won both the Google Code Jam and the Facebook Hacker Cup?
- ... that the Tokio platform for the Rust programming language uses a work stealing scheduler?
- ... that Earth 300 has designed a climate research vessel that would include a molten salt reactor and a quantum computer?
- ... that Phil Fletcher as Hacker T. Dog caused Lauren Layfield to make the "most famous snort" in the United Kingdom in 2016?
Subcategories
WikiProjects
- There are many users interested in computer programming, join them.
Computer programming news
No recent news
Topics
Related portals
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus