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The Official Programming Dictionary

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pspfanMOHH
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by pspfanMOHH »

codestation wrote:
Acid_Snake wrote:from this point onward, no more offtopic posts
Aww, but we didn't even got to /dev/null....

@OP, what about adding some entries to unicode, i18n and l10n? These three are related and very important when developing some types of applications.
Thank you for the suggestion I am gather the information right now
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Lord Aaron
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by Lord Aaron »

oh geez, so many errors and misguided information in this "Dictionary", I'll start one by one.
ASCII: ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange its a code assigning CHAR, Colors, ETC a number.
Not bad, but you should really specify that a char is one byte only in length, this will become really crucial when you go to low level and realize that C data types are a half lie.
Assembly language: A language used to interact with computers, its easier for humans to read assembly than binary since assembly is converted to binary numbers that computers can read.
this can be a bit confusing, here's what I would describe an assembly language: a 1:1 representation of the binary encoded data that a computer interprets as commands or instructions, created primarily to allow for better readability at the human level.
Or something along those lines.
Argument: In programming an argument is a command function that is passed on as binary through a compiler for the computer to run.
again, pretty confusing, here's what I would write: Data passed on to a function needed by the function to perform its task, or to change the way it behaves. Arguments are generally one way only, but they can also be used as returned values of the function.
Bracket: Brackets are the opening and closing of a piece of code using { or [ to open and } or ] to close.
First of all, there is a difference between brackets [] and curly brackets {}. Secondly, they are not always used to opening and closing a piece of code (normal brackets aren't even used for code in C). I would just present brackets for what they are and name a few uses (yes, opening and closing code is the most standard use, but not the one and only one, you should make this clear).
Boolean: A Boolean consists of operators such as AND, OR, NOT, and XOR statements resulting in True or False statements.
Oh boy, you have a pretty messed up entry here. First of all, you are mixing up terms such as "boolean operator" and "boolean value" here. What you just called "Boolean" in general, I would rather call "Boolean Algebra" and then make two more separate entries for "boolean operations" (AND, OR, NOT, XOR, whatever) and "boolean values" (true-false, 1-0, black-white, etc).
C: C is commonly used to describe the C: drive or the first hard driver on compatibility computers. Now days C Driver is known as My Computer or the Computer file with any types of disks.
If you wanna make a dictionary about programming, stick to programming. The first thing that comes to a programmer's mind when they talk about "C" is the language, not Drive C. Again, stick to programming, not OS, you should remove this entry or change it to reflect the C Programming Language.
C, C++, C#: C, C++, C# are all high level programming languages, C# developed by microsoft, C is designed by Dennis Ritchie, C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup, Bell Labs. These languages are most commonly used by all programmers.
First: C, C++ and C# are not high level programming languages by today's standards. Secondly, if you are gonna mention all three of these, I recommend you talk about the main principles of C, and then talk about what C++ and C# added to these.
Char: It is short for character, which is a data type that holds one character (letter, number, etc.) of data such as "c", "9", or "#"
Now it would be a good time to refer back to the ascii table to encourage whoever reads this from looking up the table for better understanding on a char. You should also mention that a char takes up 1 byte of space, again, it'll be useful for when you get to low level programming.
Code: A line of script that commands something.
very, very vague, I do not have enough time to write what "code" means in programming, look it up and make a way better description as this is one of the most important things there is to know.
Compile: To put everything together, process to creating an executable program that the computer can understand without the assembly factors.
everything was ok until the comma, everything after that is messed up. Compiling is the process of putting everything together, so far that's true, but the part about "without the assembly factor" was messed up, without assembly all you get is a big pile of text the computer doesn't understand.
Declare/ Declaration: To define a variable it's value or char.
I do not know what the word "char" is doing here. I think it's better if you leave it like this: To define a value or type.
High Level Programming Language: High Level programming language has a strong abstraction from the computer details, it is easier for humans to read and edit, and once its compiled the compiler converts the code to binary/low level language which computers can read and process.
pretty good, but you should change the last part to: code can be directly translated to machine code (assembly) or it can be interpreted by an intermediate software.
Null: The value of 0. AKA Nil
I would change that to: Null: from Latin Nullus, literately meaning nothing. The representation of null may varie from language to language: low level languages usually use the number 0 while higher level languages preffer to use a predefined class, but the meaning is the same: nothing. Other technical names are Nil (from Latin Nihil, meaning the same as Nullus) or None.
Void: The termination of an argument.
what?, Void means "undefined". Literately void means that ANYTHING can be there, and this is more clear when you go to low level. I have no idea why you mixed void and arguments in there, but trust me, it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Variable: A variable is a location where values are stored, a storage house. Or simpler definition would be a memory address.
Wrong, a register it's not a memory address, yet it's still a variable. This is my definition of variable: a value that can change as needed by the programmer.


To sum up, there are a lot of f*ck ups in this dictionary of yours, I just pointed out what I think are the worst, and gave my own opinion on how you should change them. But do not feel the need to copy my words one by one, make some own judgments, make some own research, but do consider what I am saying, as I know what I'm saying.
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hgoel0974
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by hgoel0974 »

****, that's huge post aaron.
I never noticed the variable definition there but it should have been kept as is in math "A symbol which represents a value" because there are more data types than just int or char
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codestation
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by codestation »

I agree with most that Lord Aaron said, and this thread can help OP and others to clear some misconceptions about programming.

Just some things:
Bracket: ...
That should be removed or replaced with something like control block and explain it better. Some languages uses reserved words (like Lua and Pascal), or nothing at all (like Python who uses another method to separate code blocks).
Now it would be a good time to refer back to the ascii table to encourage whoever reads this from looking up the table for better understanding on a char. You should also mention that a char takes up 1 byte of space, again, it'll be useful for when you get to low level programming.
Depends on the language, in Java a char is 16 bits so IMO is better to omit the size or explain it better.
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Acid_Snake
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by Acid_Snake »

codestation wrote:Depends on the language, in Java a char is 16 bits so IMO is better to omit the size or explain it better.
partially agree with Lord Aaron and you here. It's true that a char can change size depending on the language, but I also support the idea of explaining that data types (int, char, float, double, etc) are mostly use for the compiler to know what size it'll have, cause at the end of the day, a computer doesn't know if the data sent is a float, char or int, that's something for the programmer, what the computer does need to know is the size of the data.
josh_axey
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by josh_axey »

Regarding:
pspfanMOHH wrote:
Bracket: Brackets are the opening and closing of a piece of code using { or [ to open and } or ] to close.
It may be worth adding for clarity sake, the names of the brackets. As, for instance, the language we use here (work) for PLC programming uses a lot of braces, which are { & } and defined as such in it's documentation. (obviously it is c-like/style)

Thus something like:
Bracket: Brackets are the opening and closing of a piece of code using { or [ to open and } or ] to close. These are referred to as, [] = Bracket, {} = Brace, <> =Chevron, () = Parentheses.
This way you can better describe the use of [] for arrays, and {} for subordinates (for example).
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grief3r
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by grief3r »

how is a char(8 bit) able to represent a character such as あ which requires 3 bytes?
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hgoel0974
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by hgoel0974 »

grief3r wrote:how is a char(8 bit) able to represent a character such as あ which requires 3 bytes?
IIRC, that uses UTF-8 encoding where characters can be more than one byte.
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codestation
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Re: The Official Programming Dictionary

Post by codestation »

grief3r wrote:how is a char(8 bit) able to represent a character such as あ which requires 3 bytes?
Simple answer, it can't. Is already addressed on this page that a char isn't always 8 bit depending on the language. Also あ can be represented by 2 bytes, depending on the encoding.

For example: in C, a char is 1 byte long and is commonly used to represent either an array of ascii characters or a data array. If we use ascii then it can be used to represent a character per every char on the array. To represent あ we have to switch to an encoding where this is possible like UTF-8 (3 bytes for that character), UTF-16 (2 bytes), shift-jis (2 bytes) or UTF-32 (4 bytes, ugh....), and it becomes a data array because it becomes difficult to access individual characters (UTF-8) or calculate things like a string length (UTF-16) using the standard C libraries.
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