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Structured Programming - Glossary

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Edsger W. Dijkstra's letter to the Editor of Communications of the ACM, published in March 1968, marks the true beginning of structured programming. Structured programming can be seen as a subset or subdiscipline of imperative programming, one of the major programming paradigms. It is most famous for removing or reducing reliance on the GOTO statement. Edsger Dijkstra's subsequent article,

Go To Statement Considered Harmful

was instrumental in the trend towards structured programming. Description of the inverse relationship between a programmer's ability and the density of goto statements in his program is repeated.

Algorithm: A set of ordered, unambiguous instructions that completes a specific task in a finite number of steps.
Array: A collection of items called elements, each of which is of the same type.
Array initializer: Specifies the initial values of the elements of an array.
ASCII: A 7-bit character encoding.
Binary number system: Base 2 number system.
Bit: A single binary digit.
Block statement: A sequence of statements enclosed within curly braces.
Boolean expression: An expression with a value of true or false.
Bubble Sort: An algorithm for sorting data.
Byte: A sequence of 8 bits.
Bytecode: Machine code for the Java Virtual Machine.
Call a method: Execute the statements within the method declaration.
Cast: Explicit conversion from one data type to another.
Command-line argument: A text string provided by the user when running a program from the command-prompt.
Comments: A form of documentation used to clarify source code.
Compiler: Translates source code into machine code.
Computer program: A set of instructions used in a computer to bring about a specific result.
Data type: Indicates how to interpret the value of a variable.
Decimal number system: Base 10 number system.
Decision: Control flow construct in which a task is performed conditionally. Also referred to as selection.
Floating-point number: Used to represent a real number on a computer.
Hexadecimal number system: Base 16 number system.
Indentation: Used to improve readability of source code.
Interpreter: Translates source code into machine code, executing the resulting machine code as it is generated.
Java 2 SDK: Java 2 Software Development Kit. A software development environment for Java including a collection of software components, a Java compiler, and a Java program launcher.
Java compiler: Translates Java source code into bytecode.
Java interpreter: Runs a Java program. Translates bytecode into machine code for a particular machine.
Local variable: A variable declared within a block or in the initialization part of a for statement. Most often used to describe a variable declared within a method.
Loop: A set of statements that is executed repeatedly.
Machine language: The language understood by the computer. Also known as machine code or binary code.
Method: A named reusable block of code.
Operator precedence: Determines the order in which operations are performed.
Parameter: A value passed to a method.
Psuedocode: Form of structured English used to describe the logic of a program.
Repetition: Control flow construct in which a task is performed repeatedly. Also referred to as iteration.
Scope of a variable: The part of a program in which the variable can be used.
Sequence: Control flow construct in which tasks are preformed in a particular order.
Structured programming: A form of programming in which large, complex tasks are broken into smaller, simpler tasks.
Subprogram: A program within a program. Also called a function, method, procedure, or subroutine.
Truncation: Discarding part of value.
Two's complement: Binary representation for signed integers.
Two-dimensional array: An array whose elements are arrays. Also called an array of arrays.
Unicode: A 16-bit character encoding.
Variable: Named location in memory.