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Abstraction (software Engineering)
In software engineering and computer science, abstraction is: * The process of removing or generalizing physical, spatial, or temporal details or attributes in the study of objects or systems to focus attention on details of greater importance; it is similar in nature to the process of generalization; * the creation of abstract concept-objects by mirroring common features or attributes of various non-abstract objects or systems of study – the result of the process of abstraction. Abstraction, in general, is a fundamental concept in computer science and software development. The process of abstraction can also be referred to as modeling and is closely related to the concepts of ''theory'' and ''design''. Models can also be considered types of abstractions per their generalization of aspects of reality. Abstraction in computer science is closely related to abstraction in mathematics due to their common focus on building abstractions as objects, but is also related to other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Guttag
John Vogel Guttag (born March 6, 1949) is an American computer scientist, professor, and former head of the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Education and career John Guttag was raised in Larchmont, New York, the son of Irwin Guttag (1916–2005) and Marjorie Vogel Guttag. John Vogel Guttag received a bachelor's degree in English from Brown University in 1971, and a master's degree in applied mathematics from Brown in 1972. In 1975, he received a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Toronto. He was a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California from 1975 to 1978, and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty in 1979. From 1993 to 1998, he served as associate department head for computer science of MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. From January 1999 through August 2004, he served as head of that department. EECS, with approximately 2000 students and 125 faculty members, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computation
Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm). Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An especially well-known discipline of the study of computation is computer science. Physical process of Computation Computation can be seen as a purely physical process occurring inside a closed physical system called a computer. Examples of such physical systems are digital computers, mechanical computers, quantum computers, DNA computers, molecular computers, microfluidics-based computers, analog computers, and wetware computers. This point of view has been adopted by the physics of computation, a branch of theoretical physics, as well as the field of natural computing. An even more radical point of view, pancomputationalism (inaudible word), is the postulate of digital physics that argues that the evolution of the universe is itself ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inheritance (object-oriented Programming)
In object-oriented programming, inheritance is the mechanism of basing an object or class upon another object ( prototype-based inheritance) or class ( class-based inheritance), retaining similar implementation. Also defined as deriving new classes ( sub classes) from existing ones such as super class or base class and then forming them into a hierarchy of classes. In most class-based object-oriented languages, an object created through inheritance, a "child object", acquires all the properties and behaviors of the "parent object" , with the exception of: constructors, destructor, overloaded operators and friend functions of the base class. Inheritance allows programmers to create classes that are built upon existing classes, to specify a new implementation while maintaining the same behaviors ( realizing an interface), to reuse code and to independently extend original software via public classes and interfaces. The relationships of objects or classes through inheritance give ris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class (computer Programming)
In object-oriented programming, a class is an extensible program-code-template for creating objects, providing initial values for state (member variables) and implementations of behavior (member functions or methods). In many languages, the class name is used as the name for the class (the template itself), the name for the default constructor of the class (a subroutine that creates objects), and as the type of objects generated by instantiating the class; these distinct concepts are easily conflated. Although, to the point of conflation, one could argue that is a feature inherent in a language because of its polymorphic nature and why these languages are so powerful, dynamic and adaptable for use compared to languages without polymorphism present. Thus they can model dynamic systems (i.e. the real world, machine learning, AI) more easily. When an object is created by a constructor of the class, the resulting object is called an instance of the class, and the member variable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisp (programming Language)
Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common use, after Fortran. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket and Clojure. Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by (though not originally derived from) the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became a favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order functions, recursion, the self-hosting compiler, and the read†... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S-expression
In computer programming, an S-expression (or symbolic expression, abbreviated as sexpr or sexp) is an expression in a like-named notation for nested list (tree-structured) data. S-expressions were invented for and popularized by the programming language Lisp, which uses them for source code as well as data. In the usual parenthesized syntax of Lisp, an S-expression is classically definedJohn McCarthy (1960/2006)Recursive functions of symbolic expressions. Originally published in Communications of the ACM. as # an atom of the form ''x'', or # an expression of the form (''x'' . ''y'') where ''x'' and ''y'' are S-expressions. This definition reflects LISP's representation of a list as a series of "cells", each one an ordered pair. In plain lists, ''y'' points to the next cell (if any), thus forming a list. The recursive clause of the definition means that both this representation and the S-expression notation can represent any binary tree. However, the representation can in princi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lambda Calculus
Lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine. It was introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of his research into the foundations of mathematics. Lambda calculus consists of constructing § lambda terms and performing § reduction operations on them. In the simplest form of lambda calculus, terms are built using only the following rules: * x – variable, a character or string representing a parameter or mathematical/logical value. * (\lambda x.M) – abstraction, function definition (M is a lambda term). The variable x becomes bound in the expression. * (M\ N) – application, applying a function M to an argument N. M and N are lambda terms. The reduction operations include: * (\lambda x.M \rightarrow(\l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Variables And Bound Variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a free variable is a notation (symbol) that specifies places in an expression where substitution may take place and is not a parameter of this or any container expression. Some older books use the terms real variable and apparent variable for free variable and bound variable, respectively. The idea is related to a placeholder (a symbol that will later be replaced by some value), or a wildcard character that stands for an unspecified symbol. In computer programming, the term free variable refers to variables used in a function that are neither local variables nor parameters of that function. The term non-local variable is often a synonym in this context. A bound variable, in contrast, is a variable that has been ''bound'' to a specific value or range of values in the domain of discourse or universe. This may be achieved through the use of logical quantifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expression (mathematics)
In mathematics, an expression or mathematical expression is a finite combination of symbols that is well-formed according to rules that depend on the context. Mathematical symbols can designate numbers ( constants), variables, operations, functions, brackets, punctuation, and grouping to help determine order of operations and other aspects of logical syntax. Many authors distinguish an expression from a '' formula'', the former denoting a mathematical object, and the latter denoting a statement about mathematical objects. For example, 8x-5 is an expression, while 8x-5 \geq 5x-8 is a formula. However, in modern mathematics, and in particular in computer algebra, formulas are viewed as expressions that can be evaluated to ''true'' or ''false'', depending on the values that are given to the variables occurring in the expressions. For example 8x-5 \geq 5x-8 takes the value ''false'' if is given a value less than –1, and the value ''true'' otherwise. Examples The use of e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Control Flow
In computer science, control flow (or flow of control) is the order in which individual statements, instructions or function calls of an imperative program are executed or evaluated. The emphasis on explicit control flow distinguishes an ''imperative programming'' language from a '' declarative programming'' language. Within an imperative programming language, a ''control flow statement'' is a statement that results in a choice being made as to which of two or more paths to follow. For non-strict functional languages, functions and language constructs exist to achieve the same result, but they are usually not termed control flow statements. A set of statements is in turn generally structured as a block, which in addition to grouping, also defines a lexical scope. Interrupts and signals are low-level mechanisms that can alter the flow of control in a way similar to a subroutine, but usually occur as a response to some external stimulus or event (that can occur asynchronously), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Procedure (computer Science)
In computer programming, a function or subroutine is a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task, packaged as a unit. This unit can then be used in programs wherever that particular task should be performed. Functions may be defined within programs, or separately in libraries that can be used by many programs. In different programming languages, a function may be called a routine, subprogram, subroutine, method, or procedure. Technically, these terms all have different definitions, and the nomenclature varies from language to language. The generic umbrella term ''callable unit'' is sometimes used. A function is often coded so that it can be started several times and from several places during one execution of the program, including from other functions, and then branch back (''return'') to the next instruction after the ''call'', once the function's task is done. The idea of a subroutine was initially conceived by John Mauchly during his work on ENIAC, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. ( Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter. If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction. If the source code is requested for execution, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
