Computing fundamentals

Question 1

Operating System

Answer 1

A system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs

Question 2

Multics/UNIX

Answer 2

Multics was a time-sharing operating system. It was designed to run multiple programs at the same time. UNIX was the alternative to Multics when the multics project fell apart.

Question 3

Shell

Answer 3

This is a computer program which exposes an operating systems services to a human user or other programs. A shell is a computer program that presents a command line interface which allows you to control your computer using commands entered with a keyboard instead of controlling graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with a mouse/keyboard combination.

Question 4

Kernel

Answer 4

This is the central part of an operating system. It manages the operations of the computer and the hardware, most notably memory and cpu.

Question 5

Bourne Shell

Answer 5

This was a shell developed for the UNIX operating system. It allowed users to issue commands to the UNIX operating system.

Question 6

Interpreted language / Interpreter

Answer 6

Interpreters run through a program line by line and execute each command. Python is an interpreted language.

Question 7

Compiled Language / compiler

Answer 7

Compiled languages are converted directly into machine code that the processor can execute. They tend to be faster and more efficient to execute than interpreted languages. Examples are C, C++

Question 8

C language

Answer 8

It was created by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson when they were working on creating UNIX. The success of UNIX meant the C language became a success too.

Question 9

Open Source

Answer 9

Software which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.

Question 10

Linux

Answer 10

is an open-source UNIX like operating system based on the linux kernel.

Question 11

Bash

Answer 11

Bash is a command line interpreter for operating systems. It is a re-creation of the Bourne Shell, but for open source, free to everyone.

Question 12

Python

Answer 12

Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose programming language. Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant indentation.

Question 13

IPython

Answer 13

Is an enhanced version of the python shell. It does a lot of useful text formatting, such as coloring certain words depending on whether they’re a variable, function, etc.

Question 14

Jupyter Notebook

Answer 14

Is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.