Glossary

Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...

— Merlin, The Coder

A

API

an Application Programming Interface (API) connects computers or software to each other; a common example is logging-in to a third-party site via Google.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange; ASCII codes represent characters and text in computers and other electronic communication devices

B

Base

aka Number Base is the number of unique digits, including zero, used to represent numbers in a positional number system

C

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets is a programming language that is commonly used with HTML and provides styling for a web page

D

Directory

a logical grouping of related files (and potentially other directories)

E

emacs

a powerful text editor and environment available on various operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS

F

File

either a destination or source for a stream of data, most often persisted on a storage device

H

HTML

HyperText Markup Language, is one of the essential building blocks for web pages. It defines the general structure of a web page, as well as its content. Every single website on the internet uses HTML in one form or another.

J

JavaScript

a high-level programming language, which can be used to fetch data via an API, modify HTML and CSS, and is the core of modern web pages

P

PHP

the most commonly used server-side language

Process

a program that is being executed by the operating system

Positional Notation

a method of encoding numbers that uses the same symbol for different orders of magnitude depending on its position; the value of a position is dependent on the location within the number

Python

a free, high-level open source programming language that can be used in both front-end and back-end development

S

Shell

a user interface that provides access to an operating system's services

Syntactic Sugar

syntax within a language which isn't strictly required but, in some manner, generally through increased clarity or readability, makes the syntax easier to understand for humans