The Computer Programming Portal
Sample of a computer program (a minified version of the BootstrapJS library) on a screen
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...)
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A computer lab contains a wide range of information technology elements,
including hardware, software and storage systems.
Information technology (IT) is the study or use of computers, telecommunication systems and other devices to create, process, store, retrieve and transmit information. While the term is commonly used to refer to computers and computer networks, it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Information technology is an application of computer science and computer engineering.
An information technology system (IT system) is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users, and an IT project usually refers to the commissioning and implementation of an IT system. IT systems play a vital role in facilitating efficient data management, enhancing communication networks, and supporting organizational processes across various industries. Successful IT projects require meticulous planning and ongoing maintenance to ensure optimal functionality and alignment with organizational objectives.
Although humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, analysing and communicating information since the earliest writing systems were developed, the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs. (Full article...) -
Carphone Warehouse is a mobile phone retailer based in London, United Kingdom. In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc (previously named "Dixons Carphone"), which was formed by the merger of its former parent Carphone Warehouse Group with Dixons Retail. Prior to this merger, Carphone Warehouse Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Following the closure of all stand-alone UK stores in April 2020, all remaining Carphone Warehouse UK outlets were within branches of Currys PC World. In April 2021, the Carphone Warehouse business in Ireland (including all stand-alone and co-located branches and the website) was closed with immediate effect. Currys continued to use the Carphone Warehouse brand in the United Kingdom, online and, until 2021, inside Currys stores. (Full article...) -
W3sDesign Interpreter Design Pattern UML
In computing, an interpreter is software that directly executes encoded logic. Use of an interpreter contrasts the direct execution of CPU-native executable code that typically involves compiling source code to machine code. Input to an interpreter conforms to a programming language which may be a traditional, well-defined language (such as JavaScript), but could alternatively be a custom language or even a relatively trivial data encoding such as a control table.
Historically, programs were either compiled to machine code for native execution or interpreted. Over time, many hybrid approaches were developed. Early versions of Lisp and BASIC runtime environments parsed source code and performed its implied behavior directly. The runtime environments for Perl, Raku, Python, MATLAB, and Ruby translate source code into an intermediate format before executing to enhance runtime performance. The .NET and Java eco-systems use bytecode for an intermediate format, but in some cases the runtime environment translates the bytecode to machine code (via Just-in-time compilation) instead of interpreting the bytecode directly.
Although each programming language is usually associated with a particular runtime environment, a language can be used in different environments. For example interpreters have been constructed for languages traditionally associated with compilation, such as ALGOL, Fortran, COBOL, C and C++. Thus, the terms interpreted language and compiled language, although commonly used, have little meaning. (Full article...) -
Block diagram of a basic computer with uniprocessor CPU. Black lines indicate the flow of control signals, whereas red lines indicate the flow of processor instructions and data. Arrows indicate the direction of flow.
In computer science and computer engineering, a computer architecture is 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...) -
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals.
High-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search); recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix); virtual assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo); generative and creative tools (e.g., language models and AI art); and superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., chess and Go). However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore."
Various subfields of AI research are centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include learning, reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, natural language processing, perception, and support for robotics. To reach these goals, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of techniques, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and methods based on statistics, operations research, and economics. AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and other fields. Some companies, such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, aim to create artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI that can complete virtually any cognitive task at least as well as a human. (Full article...) -
Portion of the calculating machine with a printing mechanism of the analytical engine, built by Charles Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum (London)
The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical general-purpose computer designed by the English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical calculator.
The analytical engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the structure of the analytical engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era. The analytical engine is one of the most successful achievements of Charles Babbage.
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until 1941 that Konrad Zuse built the first general-purpose computer, Z3, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering analytical engine in 1837. (Full article...) -
Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle AST, is an American-born Dutch computer scientist and retired 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...) -
Charles Babbage KH FRS (/ˈbæbɪdʒ/; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
Babbage is considered by some to merit the title of "father of the computer". He is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer, the difference engine, that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in his analytical engine, programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom. As part of his computer work, he also designed the first computer printers. He had a broad range of interests in addition to his work on computers, covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was an important figure in the social scene in London, and is credited with importing the "scientific soirée" from France with his well-attended Saturday evening soirées. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.
Babbage, who died before the complete successful engineering of many of his designs, including his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, remained a prominent figure in the ideating of computing. Parts of his incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London. In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from the original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. (Full article...) -
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...) -
MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory) is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages.
Although MATLAB is intended primarily for numeric computing, an optional toolbox uses the MuPAD symbolic engine allowing access to symbolic computing abilities. An additional package, Simulink, adds graphical multi-___domain simulation and model-based design for dynamic and embedded systems.
As of 2020[update], MATLAB has more than four million users worldwide. They come from various backgrounds of engineering, science, and economics. As of 2017[update], more than 5000 global colleges and universities use MATLAB to support instruction and research. (Full article...) -
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada 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 recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke. All her half-siblings, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Lord Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. He died in Greece whilst fighting in the Greek War of Independence, when she was eight. Lady Byron was anxious about her daughter's upbringing and promoted Lovelace's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Lovelace remained interested in her father, naming one son Byron and the other, for her father's middle name, Gordon. Upon her death, she was buried next to her father at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Lovelace pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.
Lovelace's 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. Lovelace described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". (Full article...) -
tcsh and sh shell windows on a Mac OS X Leopard desktop
A Unix shell is a shell that provides a command-line user interface for a Unix-like operating system. A Unix shell provides a command language that can be used either interactively or for writing a shell script. A user typically interacts with a Unix shell via a terminal emulator; however, direct access via serial hardware connections or Secure Shell are common for server systems. Although use of a Unix shell is popular with some users, others prefer to use a windowing system such as desktop Linux distribution or macOS instead of a command-line interface.
A user may have access to multiple Unix shells with one configured to run by default when the user logs in interactively. The default selection is typically stored in a user's profile; for example, in the local passwd file or in a distributed configuration system such as NIS or LDAP. A user may use other shells nested inside the default shell.
A Unix shell may provide many features including: variable definition and substitution, command substitution, filename wildcarding, stream piping, control flow structures (condition-testing and iteration), working directory context, and here document. (Full article...) -
Rust is a general-purpose programming language emphasizing performance, type safety, and concurrency. It enforces memory safety, meaning that all references point to valid memory. It does so without a conventional garbage collector; instead, memory safety errors and data races are prevented by the "borrow checker", which tracks the object lifetime of references at compile time.
Rust supports multiple programming paradigms. It was influenced by ideas from functional programming, including immutability, higher-order functions, algebraic data types, and pattern matching. It also supports object-oriented programming via structs, enums, traits, and methods.
Software developer Graydon Hoare created Rust as a personal project while working at Mozilla Research in 2006. Mozilla officially sponsored the project in 2009. The first stable release of Rust, Rust 1.0, was published in May 2015. Following a large layoff of Mozilla employees in August 2020, multiple other companies joined Mozilla in sponsoring Rust through the creation of the Rust Foundation in February 2021. In December 2022, Rust became the first language other than C and assembly to be supported in the development of the Linux kernel. (Full article...) -
Scala (/ˈskɑːlɑː/ SKAH-lah) is a strongly statically typed high-level general-purpose programming language that supports both object-oriented programming and functional programming. Designed to be concise, many of Scala's design decisions are intended to address criticisms of Java.
Scala source code can be compiled to Java bytecode and run on a Java virtual machine (JVM). Scala can also be transpiled to JavaScript to run in a browser, or compiled directly to a native executable. When running on the JVM, Scala provides language interoperability with Java so that libraries written in either language may be referenced directly in Scala or Java code. Like Java, Scala is object-oriented, and uses a syntax termed curly-brace which is similar to the language C. Since Scala 3, there is also an option to use the off-side rule (indenting) to structure blocks, and its use is advised. Martin Odersky has said that this turned out to be the most productive change introduced in Scala 3.
Unlike Java, Scala has many features of functional programming languages (like Scheme, Standard ML, and Haskell), including currying, immutability, lazy evaluation, and pattern matching. It also has an advanced type system supporting algebraic data types, covariance and contravariance, higher-order types (but not higher-rank types), anonymous types, operator overloading, optional parameters, named parameters, raw strings, and an experimental exception-only version of algebraic effects that can be seen as a more powerful version of Java's checked exceptions. (Full article...) -
C++ 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, adding object-oriented (OOP) features, it has since expanded significantly over time adding more OOP and other features; as of 1997[update]/C++98 standardization, C++ has added functional features, in addition to facilities for low-level memory manipulation for systems like microcomputers or to make operating systems like Linux or Windows, and even later came features like generic programming (through the use of templates). C++ 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 October 2024 as ISO/IEC 14882:2024 (informally known as C++23). 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, C++17, and C++20 standards. The current C++23 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++26 as the next planned standard. (Full article...)
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GNOME Shell, GNOME Clocks, Evince, gThumb and GNOME Files at version 3.30, in a dark theme -
Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics. -
An IBM Port-A-Punch punched card -
Grace 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). -
Bill Gosper's Glider Gun in action -
Margaret Hamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project. -
Partial 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. -
A head crash on a modern hard disk drive -
Output 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. -
Ada 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. -
A view of the GNU nano Text editor version 6.0 -
Animation of a Non-uniform rational B-spline surface. Modeled and rendered in Cobalt. -
Partial view of the Mandelbrot set. Step 1 of a zoom sequence: Gap between the "head" and the "body" also called the "seahorse valley". -
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Deep 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. -
This image (when viewed in full size, 1000 pixels wide) contains 1 million pixels, each of a different color. -
A lone house. An image made using Blender 3D.
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Did you know? -
- ... that a pink skin for Mercy in the video game Overwatch helped raise more than $12 million for breast cancer research?
- ... that it took a particle accelerator and machine-learning algorithms to extract the charred text of PHerc. Paris. 4 without unrolling it?
- ... that Cornell University's student-oriented programming language dialect was made available to other universities but required a "research grant" payment in exchange?
- ... that both Thackeray and Longfellow bought paintings by Fanny Steers?
- ... 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 the Gale–Shapley algorithm was used to assign medical students to residencies long before its publication by Gale and Shapley?
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