Program

  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Program

Definition: Program

Program

Noun

1. A system of projects or services intended to meet a public need; "he proposed an elaborate program of public works"; "working mothers rely on the day care program".

2. A series of steps to be carried out or goals to be accomplished; "they drew up a six-step plan"; "they discussed plans for a new bond issue".

3. (computer science) a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute; "the program required several hundred lines of code".

4. A course of academic studies; "he was admitted to a new program at the university".

5. A radio or television show; "did you see his program last night?".

6. A performance (or series of performances) at a public presentation; "the program lasted more than two hours".

7. A document stating the aims and principles of a political party; "their candidate simply ignored the party platform"; "they won the election even though they offered no positive program".

8. An announcement of the events that will occur as part of a theatrical or sporting event; "you can't tell the players without a program".

Verb

1. Arrange a program of or for.

2. Write a computer program.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "program" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1550. (references)

 

Specialty Definition: Program

DomainDefinition

Computing

Program n. 1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. 2. An exercise in experimental epistemology. 3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably a failure if other programmers can't understand it. Source: Jargon File.

Aerospace

1. In computer operations, a plan for the solution of a problem. 2. To create a plan for the solution of a problem.A complete program includes plans for the transcription of data, coding for the computer, and plans for the absorption of the results into the system. The list of coded instructions, called a routine, plans a computation or process from the asking of a question to the delivery of the result, including the integration of the operation into an existing system. Thus, programming consists of planning and coding, including numerical analysis, systems analysis, specification of printing formats, and any other functions necessary to the integration of a computer in a system. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Animatrix Program

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Animatrix: Program is a short film written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and is part of the Animatrix series.

Cast

Plot

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers

Program is mainly about a girl, named Cis, who is roaming around in her favorite battle program where she is fighting samurai. A man named Duo appears and tries to convince her to join him on a trip to the Matrix but Cis refuses and tries to run away defending herself from attack. When Cis sees running is useless, she stands still and Duo jumps from a higher level roof with his sword in the air. Cis concentrates and grabs the blade of the sword inches from her face and breaks it. Cis then takes the broken part of the sword and kills Duo only to wake up from the program and find it was a test her brother had arranged for her. Program has no relevance to the actual storyline.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Animatrix Program."

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Computer program

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A '''computer program tells a computer what to do. It is a sequence of instructions to be executed in order. A computer program consists of a set of instructions that the computer understands.

A computer without a program does absolutely nothing.

The instructions in a computer program are in machine code; they are usually originally written in a computer programming language, and translated to machine code using a computer program called a compiler. Sometimes the programming language is simply a set of abbreviations for the machine code instructions, called assembly language -- in this case, a program called an assembler is used to make the translation.

It is sometimes used as a synonym for "software"; although the main part of any software is programs, software also often includes resource files that contain data of some kind; these are not part of the program per se. An abstract program is sometimes called an algorithm.

Computer programs are now also the subject of mathematics - for example, algorithmic information theory studies the behavior of idealized computers executing randomly generated computer programs.

An alternative British spelling is computer programme, although this is rare and the British spelling in this context is generally 'program'.

See also

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Computer programming

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Programming is the act of creating a computer program, a concrete set of instructions for a computer to carry out. The program is written in a programming language, although its possible to directly write in machine code, with a certain difficulty. Different parts of a program may be written in different languages.

Different programming languages work in different ways. So, programmers may create very different programs for different languages; although, theoretically, most languages can be used to create any possible program. For more information on those methods, please see individual language entries elsewhere.

Software is a mass noun for computer programs and data.

Programs versus algorithms

An algorithm is, in one sense, an abstracted program - to put it another way, a program is an algorithm made concrete. However, all but the smallest programs are most easily thought of as a collection of smaller algorithms combined in a unique way - as a house is built from components.

Programming versus software engineering

Creating a computer program consists of five major steps:

  1. Recognizing the need for a program to solve a problem.
  2. Planning the program and selecting the tools to solve the problem.
  3. Writing the program in the programming language of choice.
  4. Compiling: translating the human-readable source code into machine-readable executable code, which is done by compilers and other tools.
  5. Testing the program to make sure it works; if not, return to step 3 (see code and fix).

These 5 steps are collectively known as software engineering. Programming emphasizes steps 2, 3 and 4. Coding emphasizes step 3. The term coder, sometimes used as a synonym for programmer, can be demeaning, because it ignores the skills they use in tackling the other four steps.

Prehistory

The earliest known computer programmer was Ada Lovelace, daughter of Anabella and Lord Byron (the poet). Anabella gave her love of mathematics to Ada, who after meeting Charles Babbage, translated and expanded a description of his analytical engine. Even though Babbage never completed construction of any of his machines, the work that he and Ada did on them earned her the title of the world's first computer programmer, see Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine. The Ada programming language is named for her. (To do: find name of first programmer to complete all 5 steps, including compiling and testing.)

Alan Turing is often considered the father of computer science, and by proxy, programming. He was responsible for helping design and program a computer to break the German ENIGMA code during World War Two.

See also

External links

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Computer software

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

zh-cn:计算机软件

Software is a generic term for organized collections of computer data and instructions, often broken into two major categories: system software that provides the basic non-task-specific functions of the computer, and application software used to accomplish specific user-oriented tasks.

System software

System software is responsible for controlling, integrating, and managing the individual hardware components of a computer system so that other software and the users of the system see it as a functional unit without having to be concerned with the low-level details such as transferring data from memory to disk, or rendering text onto a display. Generally, system software consists of an operating system and some fundamental utilities such as disk formatters, file managers, display managers, text editors, user authentication (login) and management tools, and networking and device control software.

Application software

Application software, on the other hand, is used to accomplish specific tasks other than just running the computer system. Application software may consist of a single program, such as an image viewer; a small collection of programs (often called a software package) that work closely together to accomplish a task, such as a spreadsheet or text processing system; a larger collection (often called a software suite) of related but independent programs and packages that have a common user interface or shared data format, such as Microsoft Office, which consists of closely integrated word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc.; or a software system, such as a database management system, which is a collection of fundamental programs that may provide some service to a variety of other independent applications.

Software creation

Software is created with programming languages and related utilities, which may come in several of the above forms: single programs like script interpreters, packages containing a compiler, linker, and other tools; and large suites (often called Integrated Development Environments) that include editors, debuggers, and other tools for multiple languages.

Software patents

The issue of software patents is very controversial, since while patents protect the ideas of "inventors", they are widely believed to hinder software development.

Related articles

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Program

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A program (British spelling for some senses: programme) is a series of instructions to be executed in order. In another sense, a program is a collection of projects that are directed toward a common goal, e.g. the NASA space program.

There are several kinds of program:

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Program."

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T-4 Euthanasia Program

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler's T-4 Euthanasia Program was established in order to maintain the purity of the Aryan race. The plan allowed the systematic killing of children born with physical deformities or mental illness.

Under the control of Karl Brandt, "defective" children were removed from their families and taken to "hospitals" where the exterminations were carried out at the Hartheim and Hadamar killing centres. The program was expanded to include adults to prevent any "deficient" member of the German Master race from "breeding" so they could not pass on their inferiority.

One of the most important and well-known books about the Nazi Euthanasia action was written by Ernst Klee: Euthanasie im NS-Staat - Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens.

Klee describes the extermination "hospitals" like Grafeneck or Hartheim, where actually the first gas chambers were built (even before the Holocaust) and where mostly (adult) people were suffocated with carbon monoxide. Klee describes further the killing of crippled children by doctors with lethal injections, and the starvation of patients marked for extermination.

Klee describes as well the resistance from the churches and the relatives of the victims, which led to a slow-down and greater secrecy of the operation, but did not stop it. Till the operation was conducted more covertly after August 1941, 70,000 people had already died in the gas chambers of Grafeneck, Hartheim, Hadamar, Bernburg, Brandenburg and Sonnenstein. By that time every third inmate of a psychiatric institution in Germany had already died (leading to about 93,000 "free beds" at the end of 1941 in Nazi terminology) either by being actively killed or by starvation.

Most of the participants of the T-4 Euthanasia Program became part of the Holocaust as well, developing gas chamber technology and even helping to build death camps as Belzec, Treblinka or Sobibor in Operation Reinhard, as Klee notes. Aside from the well-known Auschwitz-Birkenau these were the main centers of extermination by gas for millions of people.

External links



INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Crosswords
4. Usage: Modern 		5. Usage: Commercial
6. Images: Slideshow
7. Images: Photo Album
8. Images: Digital Art 		9. Quotations: Familiar
10. Quotations: Fiction
11. Quotations: Non-fiction
12. Quotations: Spoken 		13. Quotations: Speeches
14. Usage Frequency
15. Expressions
16. Expressions: Internet 		17. Translations: Modern
18. Translations: Ancient
19. Abbreviations
20. Acronyms 		21. Derivations
22. Rhymes
23. Anagrams
24. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.