Literate programmingLiterate programming is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of how it works in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable source code can be generated. The approach is used in scientific computing and in data science routinely for reproducible research and open access purposes. Literate programming tools are used by millions of programmers today.
Programming styleProgramming style, also known as code style, is a set of rules or guidelines used when writing the source code for a computer program. It is often claimed that following a particular programming style will help programmers read and understand source code conforming to the style, and help to avoid introducing errors. A classic work on the subject was The Elements of Programming Style, written in the 1970s, and illustrated with examples from the Fortran and PL/I languages prevalent at the time.
MarkdownMarkdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is easier to read in its source code form. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files. The initial description of Markdown contained ambiguities and raised unanswered questions, causing implementations to both intentionally and accidentally diverge from the original version.
Rust (programming language)Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language that emphasizes performance, type safety, and concurrency. It enforces memory safety—ensuring that all references point to valid memory—without requiring the use of a garbage collector or reference counting present in other memory-safe languages. To simultaneously enforce memory safety and prevent data races, its "borrow checker" tracks the object lifetime of all references in a program during compilation.
JavaScript syntaxThe syntax of JavaScript is the set of rules that define a correctly structured JavaScript program. The examples below make use of the log function of the console object present in most browsers for standard text output. The JavaScript standard library lacks an official standard text output function (with the exception of document.write). Given that JavaScript is mainly used for client-side scripting within modern web browsers, and that almost all Web browsers provide the alert function, alert can also be used, but is not commonly used.
Configuration fileIn computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are s used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system settings. Some applications provide tools to create, modify, and verify the syntax of their configuration files; these sometimes have graphical interfaces. For other programs, system administrators may be expected to create and modify files by hand using a text editor, which is possible because many are human-editable plain text files.
Comparison of programming languages (syntax)This comparison of programming languages compares the features of language syntax (format) for over 50 computer programming languages. Programming language expressions can be broadly classified into four syntax structures: prefix notation Lisp (* (+ 2 3) (expt 4 5)) infix notation Fortran (2 + 3) * (4 ** 5) suffix, postfix, or Reverse Polish notation Forth 2 3 + 4 5 ** * math-like notation TUTOR (2 + 3)(45) $$ note implicit multiply operator When a programming languages has statements, they typically have conventions for: statement separators; statement terminators; and line continuation A statement separator demarcates the boundary between two separate statements.
JSONJSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ˈdʒeɪsən; also ˈdʒeɪˌsɒn) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other serializable values). It is a common data format with diverse uses in electronic data interchange, including that of web applications with servers. JSON is a language-independent data format. It was derived from JavaScript, but many modern programming languages include code to generate and parse JSON-format data.
Assertion (software development)In computer programming, specifically when using the imperative programming paradigm, an assertion is a predicate (a Boolean-valued function over the state space, usually expressed as a logical proposition using the variables of a program) connected to a point in the program, that always should evaluate to true at that point in code execution. Assertions can help a programmer read the code, help a compiler compile it, or help the program detect its own defects.
String literalA string literal or anonymous string is a literal for a string value in the source code of a computer program. Modern programming languages commonly use a quoted sequence of characters, formally "bracketed delimiters", as in x = "foo", where "foo" is a string literal with value foo. Methods such as escape sequences can be used to avoid the problem of delimiter collision (issues with brackets) and allow the delimiters to be embedded in a string. There are many alternate notations for specifying string literals especially in complicated cases.
SQLiteSQLite (ˌɛsˌkjuːˌɛlˈaɪt, ˈsiːkwə,laɪt) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the most widely deployed database engine, as it is used by several of the top web browsers, operating systems, mobile phones, and other embedded systems. Many programming languages have bindings to the SQLite library.
Scripting languageA scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting language's primitives are usually elementary tasks or API calls, and the scripting language allows them to be combined into more programs. Environments that can be automated through scripting include application software, text editors, web pages, operating system shells, embedded systems, and computer games.
Directive (programming)In computer programming, a directive or pragma (from "pragmatic") is a language construct that specifies how a compiler (or other translator) should process its input. Directives are not part of the grammar of a programming language, and may vary from compiler to compiler. They can be processed by a preprocessor to specify compiler behavior, or function as a form of in-band parameterization. In some cases directives specify global behavior, while in other cases they only affect a local section, such as a block of programming code.
HyperTalkHyperTalk is a discontinued high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. Because the main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, HyperTalk programmers were usually called "authors" and the process of writing programs was known as "scripting". HyperTalk scripts resembled written English and used a logical structure similar to that of the Pascal programming language.
Human-readable medium and dataIn computing, a human-readable medium or human-readable format is any encoding of data or information that can be naturally read by humans, resulting in human-readable data. It is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than as data. In most contexts, the alternative to a human-readable representation is a machine-readable format or medium of data primarily designed for reading by electronic, mechanical or optical devices, or computers.
Conditional (computer programming)In computer science, conditionals (that is, conditional statements, conditional expressions and conditional constructs) are programming language commands for handling decisions. Specifically, conditionals perform different computations or actions depending on whether a programmer-defined Boolean condition evaluates to true or false. In terms of control flow, the decision is always achieved by selectively altering the control flow based on some condition (apart from the case of branch predication).
HaskellHaskell (ˈhæskəl) is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research, and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming language features such as type classes, which enable type-safe operator overloading, and monadic input/output (IO). It is named after logician Haskell Curry. Haskell's main implementation is the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC).
Syntax highlightingSyntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature facilitates writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and syntax errors are visually distinct.
Plain textIn computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limited number of "whitespace" characters that affect simple arrangement of text, such as spaces, line breaks, or tabulation characters.
Source codeIn computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of text, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source code. The source code is often transformed by an assembler or compiler into binary machine code that can be executed by the computer.
