Grace HopperGrace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Compiled languageA compiled language is a programming language whose implementations are typically compilers (translators that generate machine code from source code), and not interpreters (step-by-step executors of source code, where no pre-runtime translation takes place). The term is somewhat vague. In principle, any language can be implemented with a compiler or with an interpreter. A combination of both solutions is also common: a compiler can translate the source code into some intermediate form (often called p-code or bytecode), which is then passed to an interpreter which executes it.
Backus–Naur formIn computer science, Backus–Naur form (ˌbækəs_ˈnaʊər) or Backus normal form (BNF) is a metasyntax notation for context-free grammars, often used to describe the syntax of languages used in computing, such as computer programming languages, document formats, instruction sets and communication protocols. It is applied wherever exact descriptions of languages are needed: for instance, in official language specifications, in manuals, and in textbooks on programming language theory.
Make (software)In software development, Make is a build automation tool that builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading s called makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated development environments and language-specific compiler features can also be used to manage a build process, Make remains widely used, especially in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Make can be used to manage any project where some files need to be updated automatically from others whenever the others change in addition to building programs.
American National Standards InstituteThe American National Standards Institute (ANSI ˈænsi ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international standards so that American products can be used worldwide. ANSI accredits standards that are developed by representatives of other standards organizations, government agencies, consumer groups, companies, and others.
Referential transparencyIn analytic philosophy and computer science, referential transparency and referential opacity are properties of linguistic constructions, and by extension of languages. A linguistic construction is called referentially transparent when for any expression built from it, replacing a subexpression with another one that denotes the same value does not change the value of the expression. Otherwise, it is called referentially opaque.
Lisp machineLisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations. Despite being modest in number (perhaps 7,000 units total as of 1988) Lisp machines commercially pioneered many now-commonplace technologies, including effective garbage collection, laser printing, windowing systems, computer mice, high-resolution bit-mapped raster graphics, computer graphic rendering, and networking innovations such as Chaosnet.
Alan KayAlan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox PARC he led the design and development of the first modern windowed computer desktop interface. There he also led the development of the influential object-oriented programming language Smalltalk, both personally designing most of the early versions of the language and coining the term "object-oriented.
James GoslingJames Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the conception and development of the architecture for the Java programming language and for contributions to window systems. Gosling attended William Aberhart High School in Calgary, Alberta. While in high school, he wrote some of the software to analyze data from the ISIS 2 satellite, working for the University of Calgary physics department.
Denotational semanticsIn computer science, denotational semantics (initially known as mathematical semantics or Scott–Strachey semantics) is an approach of formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects (called denotations) that describe the meanings of expressions from the languages. Other approaches providing formal semantics of programming languages include axiomatic semantics and operational semantics. Broadly speaking, denotational semantics is concerned with finding mathematical objects called domains that represent what programs do.
