Programming Terms

mazembe11

Are these 3 programming terms metaphors Run,Return and function call? Am I right yes or no.

yes you're right.

Original post by Koray K.

yes you're right.

No, that's incorrect. Those words all have well-defined meanings within the context of programming and computer science. They each describe different features or capabilities of programming languages.

Running a program means a computer processing each instruction of that program one at a time.
Calling a function means creating a new frame on an area of memory known as the 'stack' and moving the 'next instruction' counter to the first line of that function.
Returning from a function means overwriting the 'next instruction' counter with a value stored on the stack and destroying the frame at the top of the stack.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 3

mazembe11

Is there a way of understanding programming terms? I am asking this question because there are not many programming terms on the Oxford Dictionary or on other English dictionaries. Do I have to guess what the programming terms mean by writing code? I do not know.

Reply 4

winterscoming

Original post by mazembe11

It will require writing code and at least learning the basics of programming in enough depth and detail so that you can at least understand some fairly simple programs and how they work -- that way you don't need to guess anything.

I'd recommend starting out with Python because that's one of the easiest languages to understand: https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-python
- If you complete all of those lessons, as well as reading the text which goes with them, then that gives you an introduction in writing code, explains what's going on and also introduces the terminology.

Reply 5

mazembe11

Are programming terms on English dictionaries? If they are not on the dictionary how am I suppose to find the meaning of the programming terms.

Reply 6

winterscoming

Original post by mazembe11

Are programming terms on English dictionaries? If they are not on the dictionary how am I suppose to find the meaning of the programming terms.

Sometimes maybe; many of them won't be because they're quite specialised to programming and computer science.

You can find a definition of them by typing them into Google, but to really understand their meaning, you need to learning to program, which you could do from from any decent programming course, tutorial or book.