Π-calculusIn theoretical computer science, the pi-calculus (or pi-calculus) is a process calculus. The pi-calculus allows channel names to be communicated along the channels themselves, and in this way it is able to describe concurrent computations whose network configuration may change during the computation. The pi-calculus has few terms and is a small, yet expressive language (see ). Functional programs can be encoded into the pi-calculus, and the encoding emphasises the dialogue nature of computation, drawing connections with game semantics.
Asynchronous I/OIn computer science, asynchronous I/O (also non-sequential I/O) is a form of input/output processing that permits other processing to continue before the transmission has finished. A name used for asynchronous I/O in the Windows API is overlapped I/O. Input and output (I/O) operations on a computer can be extremely slow compared to the processing of data. An I/O device can incorporate mechanical devices that must physically move, such as a hard drive seeking a track to read or write; this is often orders of magnitude slower than the switching of electric current.
Calculus of communicating systemsThe calculus of communicating systems (CCS) is a process calculus introduced by Robin Milner around 1980 and the title of a book describing the calculus. Its actions model indivisible communications between exactly two participants. The formal language includes primitives for describing parallel composition, choice between actions and scope restriction. CCS is useful for evaluating the qualitative correctness of properties of a system such as deadlock or livelock.
Async/awaitIn computer programming, the async/await pattern is a syntactic feature of many programming languages that allows an asynchronous, non-blocking function to be structured in a way similar to an ordinary synchronous function. It is semantically related to the concept of a coroutine and is often implemented using similar techniques, and is primarily intended to provide opportunities for the program to execute other code while waiting for a long-running, asynchronous task to complete, usually represented by promises or similar data structures.
Edsger W. DijkstraEdsger Wybe Dijkstra (ˈdaɪkstrə ; ˈɛtsxər ˈʋibə ˈdɛikstra; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, and science essayist. Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Dijkstra studied mathematics and physics and then theoretical physics at the University of Leiden. Adriaan van Wijngaarden offered him a job as the first computer programmer in the Netherlands at the Mathematical Center in Amsterdam, where he worked from 1952 until 1962.
Pipeline (software)In software engineering, a pipeline consists of a chain of processing elements (processes, threads, coroutines, functions, etc.), arranged so that the output of each element is the input of the next; the name is by analogy to a physical pipeline. Usually some amount of buffering is provided between consecutive elements. The information that flows in these pipelines is often a stream of records, bytes, or bits, and the elements of a pipeline may be called filters; this is also called the pipe(s) and filters design pattern.
Alice (programming language)Alice ML is a programming language designed by the Programming Systems Laboratory at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. It is a dialect of Standard ML, augmented with support for lazy evaluation, concurrency (multithreading and distributed computing via remote procedure calls) and constraint programming. Alice extends Standard ML in a number of ways that distinguish it from its predecessor. Alice provides concurrency features as part of the base language through the use of a future type that represents a value being provided by an independent thread of execution.
Execution (computing)Execution in computer and software engineering is the process by which a computer or virtual machine reads and acts on the instructions of a computer program. Each instruction of a program is a description of a particular action which must be carried out, in order for a specific problem to be solved. Execution involves repeatedly following a 'fetch–decode–execute' cycle for each instruction done by control unit. As the executing machine follows the instructions, specific effects are produced in accordance with the semantics of those instructions.
Infinite loopIn computer programming, an infinite loop (or endless loop) is a sequence of instructions that, as written, will continue endlessly, unless an external intervention occurs ("pull the plug"). It may be intentional. This differs from "a type of computer program that runs the same instructions continuously until it is either stopped or interrupted". Consider the following pseudocode: how_many = 0 while is_there_more_data() do how_many = how_many + 1 end display "the number of items counted = " how_many The same instructions were run continuously until it was stopped or interrupted .
Python (programming language)Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.