Introduction to Computer Science and Python Basics Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering core computational thinking principles, historical computer architectures, language structures, and fundamental Python concepts.

Declarative Knowledge

Knowledge composed of statements of fact, such as "the square root of $x$ is a number $y$ such that $y \times y = x$".

Imperative Knowledge

"How to" knowledge, or recipes for deducing information.

Algorithm

A finite list of instructions describing a set of computations that when executed on a set of inputs will proceed through a sequence of well-defined states and eventually produce an output.

Fixed-Program Computer

A computer designed to solve a specific mathematical problem whose program cannot be changed without replacing its circuitry.

Stored-Program Computer

A computer that stores and manipulates a sequence of instructions in memory and has components that execute any instruction in that sequence.

Interpreter

The heart of a stored-program computer that can execute any legal set of instructions, allowing it to compute anything described by those instructions.

Program Counter

A component that points to a particular location in memory from which computation starts or continues.

Flow of Control

The order in which instructions are executed in a program, which may jump to different points based on the results of tests.

Universal Turing Machine

A hypothetical computing device described by Alan Turing in 1936 featuring unlimited memory on a "tape" and simple primitive instructions.

Church-Turing Thesis

A thesis stating that if a function is computable, a Turing Machine can be programmed to compute it.

Halting Problem

The uncomputable problem demonstrated by Alan Turing showing it is impossible to write a program that takes an arbitrary program as input and determines if it will run forever.

Turing Complete

A property of a programming language indicating that it can be used to simulate a Universal Turing Machine.

Syntax

The rules in a language that define which strings of characters and symbols are well formed.

Static Semantics

The rules in a language that define which syntactically valid strings have a meaning.

Semantics

The meaning associated with each syntactically correct string of symbols that has no static semantic errors.

Scalar Objects

Indivisible data objects in Python, considered the atoms of the language, such as int, float, bool, and None.

Non-Scalar Objects

Data objects in Python that possess internal structure, such as strings.

Statement

A command that instructs the Python interpreter to perform an action, such as executing a print function.

Variable

A name that is bound or associated with an object in Python via an assignment statement.

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

An application suite that provides a text editor with features like syntax highlighting and autocompletion, a shell, and an integrated debugger.