Unit 1 – Introduction
Vocabulary
You will need to be familiar with the following definitions/descriptions associated with computer
programming. The descriptions stated here are "intuitive" statements and are not intended to be
definitive definitions for these terms.
Hardware - the "machinery" -
Software - the program
Program - a listing of
computer equipment - the CPU,
the monitor, the keyboard, the
mouse, the external speakers,
the scanner, the printer, etc. The
physical, touchable parts of a
computer system.
Hard Copy - a paper printout
of the program code or data
displayed on the screen.
instructions that make the
computer do something, such as
word processing, database
management, games, etc. Your
Java programs will be your
software.
Soft Copy - copy of a program
stored on a hard drive, diskette,
or CD.
Control Unit - the unit inside
Machine Language - the
of the CPU which "directs the
traffic" - makes decisions. It
performs the functions of fetch,
decode, execute, and store.
lowest level of computer
languages where instructions are
given by numeric code.
instructions (code) for the
computer to follow written in
some programming language.
For this course, these
instructions will be written in
the language of Java.
Network - a hardware and
software data communication
system. Usually a group of
computers that are linked to
share memory and programs.
High Level Language - a
computer language which is
easily read by humans - the code
consists of English-like words
where each statement
corresponds to several machine
language instructions.
Interpreter - converts a
program one line at a time into
machine language.
Object Code - the machine
Compiler - converts the
code version of the source
source code of a program to
program (a program written by a machine language placing the
programmer).
result in an object code file.
Bit - the representation of a 1 or 0 designating power ON or power OFF. A
binary digit.
Byte - 8 bits.
Kilobyte - approximately 1000 bytes (1024 bytes).
Megabyte - approximately 1,000,000 bytes (1,048,576 bytes).
Gigabyte - approximately a billion bytes (1,073,741,824 bytes).
Why are the actual number
of bytes "more" than what
we expect them to be?
We are thinking "kilo" in
base 10 while the computer
is thinking "kilo" in base 2.
Format/Initialize - to prepare a storage device (diskette or hard disk) for receiving information for a
system. The storage device is said to be formatted (into areas called sectors and tracks) when its space
has been divided and organized into areas that can be quickly controlled by the system for storage and
access.
AAH Computer Science