Computer Science Basics

Front 1

first modern computer came into existence in

Back 1

1940s

Front 2

what are the components of hardware

Back 2

cpu, memory, storage devices, I/O devices

Front 3

who proposed the idea of programmable computer first?

Back 3

charles babbage

Front 4

who introduced the idea of computer architecture based on stored programs?

Back 4

john von neumann

Front 5

what was the first computer called?

Back 5

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was built by
the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory in 1946. It was part of research
aimed at providing better ballistic missiles to the U.S. Army during World War II.

Front 6

what was UNIVAC?

Back 6

Dr. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly, two members of the team that built ENIAC,
started their own company, Universal Automatic Computer, or UNIVAC, to build the first
commercial computer.

Front 7

Who was the first client of UNIVAC?

Back 7

Their first client was the United States Census Bureau, which
needed a computer to keep track of the growing U.S. population. The computer was
successfully built in 1951 at the cost of about one million dollars

Front 8

what were the first programming languages?

Back 8

During the 1950s and 1960s, several high-level programming languages were
introduced, such as FORTRAN, COBOL, Lisp, ALGOL, and PL/I. The 1970s saw the
introduction of languages such as Pascal, C, and Prolog.

Front 9

what is procedural programming?

Back 9

Most of these languages such
as Pascal, C, and FORTRAN are procedural programming languages. Procedural
programming is also referred to as imperative programming. The basic idea of this
programming style is to specify the steps that the program must take to reach the
desired state.

Front 10

what is the difference between functional and logic programming?

Back 10

In functional programming style, evaluation of mathematical style functions
take place and the state variables are not used. In logic programming, a program is
expressed as a sequence of logical assertions and these assertions are automatically
evaluated to come up with the result. These languages include a logic evaluation engine
along with the compiler.

Front 11

who created first web browser?

Back 11

It was first created in 1989 by Tim
Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, when he was working as a fellow at CERN.
Marc Andreessen, a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, later
created a version of the browser in 1993, called Mosaic, which was much easier to
install and use. The browser later formed the basis for the company Netscape, which
popularized the use of web browsers.

Front 12

what are virtual machines?

Back 12

Software working with hardware allows hardware to be virtualized. A virtual machine is
a program that creates a self-contained operating environment on top of the underlying
hardware and presents appearance of different machines to the user. This allows the
same piece of hardware to be used as different machines at the same time.

Front 13

first microprocessor chip

Back 13

The first microprocessor chip, the Intel 4004

Front 14

what is main memory and secondary memory?

Back 14

main- RAM, secondary- hard disk.

main needs contant electrical supply, secondary doesn't, to keep info.

main- closely connected to processor and

secondary-

* connected to main memory through the bus and a controller. Before using data or program, they are to be copied from secondary to main.

Front 15

what are I/O device?

Back 15

Input/output devices are usually called I/O devices. They are directly connected to an electronic module attached to the motherboard called a device controller. For example, the speakers of a multimedia computer system are directly connected to a device controller called an audio card, which in turn is plugged into a bus on the motherboard.

Front 16

what is an embedded system?

Back 16

A computer system that is part of a larger machine and which controls how that machine operates is an embedded system. Usually the processor constantly runs a single control program which is permanently kept in ROM (Read Only Memory).

ROM is used to make a section of main memory read-only. Main memory looks the same as before to the processor, except a section of it permanently contains the program the processor is running. This section of memory retains its data even when power is off.

Front 17

what is a local-area network

Back 17

In a local-area network only a few dozen computers are connected together, usually all located within the same building. Each computer has a network address that the other computers use to access it. Usually the computers share a printer. There may be an especially powerful computer called a server whose hard disk holds application programs and data that the other computers are expected to need.

Front 18

what is a wide area network?

Back 18

A wide-area network can connect thousands of computers together over great distances. The long distance connections are made by using optical fiber, telephone lines, microwave radio, and satellite communications. Each computer in the network has a network address (as with local-area networks) to uniquely identify it.

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what is protocol?

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All these devices use the same method for dealing with data. Without a common method of dealing with data, a large network would become a hopeless muddle. An agreement about how to represent and transmit data over a network is called a protocol. Usually large networks use a protocol called TCP/IP (for transmission control protocol / internet protocol).

Front 20

what is a bit?

Back 20

A bit is a single on/off value. Only these two values are possible.

Front 21

what is a byte?

Back 21

One bit of information is so little that usually computer memory is organized into groups of eight bits. Each eight bit group is called a byte.

Front 22

how many bytes make up kb etc?

Back 22

Front 23

what is a machine operation?

Back 23

Each tiny electronic operation that a processor core can perform is called a machine operation. A processor (a "machine") performs these one at a time, but billions of them in a second.

Front 24

what is a machine instruction?

Back 24

A machine instruction consists of several bytes in memory that tell the processor to perform one machine operation. The processor looks at machine instructions in main memory one after another, and performs one machine operation for each machine instruction. The collection of machine instructions in main memory is called a machine language program or (more commonly) an executable program.

Front 25

What does 'processor architecture' mean ?

Back 25

The machine operations of a processor and how they have been organized and implemented,