Foundations Study Guide and Actual
Answers (2025) Updated.
Input - Answer A program gets data, perhaps from a file, keyboard, touchscreen, network, etc.
Process - Answer A program performs computations on that data, such as adding two values
like x + y.
Output - Answer A program puts that data somewhere, such as to a file, screen, network, etc.
(Computer) Program - Answer Consists of instructions executing one at a time
Variables - Answer Refer to data, like x, y, and z. The name is due to a variable's value "varying"
as a program assigns a variable like x with new values.
Computational thinking - Answer CREATING a sequence of instructions to solve a problem
Algorithm - Answer a sequence of instructions that solves a problem
Flowchart - Answer a graphical language for creating computer programs
Program - Answer a list of statements
Statement - Answer carries out some action and executing one at a time
Graphical "node" - Answer different shapes for different types of statements
Interpreter - Answer runs a program's statements
Run and execute - Answer words for carrying out a program's statements
, String literal - Answer consists of text (characters) within double quotes, as in "Go #57!"
Character - Answer includes any letter (a-z, A-Z), digit (0-9), or symbol (~, !, @, etc.)
Cursor - Answer indicates where the next output item will be placed in the output
Newline - Answer a special two-character sequence \n whose appearance in an output string
literal causes the cursor to move to the next output line. The newline exists invisibly in the
output.
Comment - Answer text a programmer adds to a program, to be read by humans to better
understand the code, but ignored by the program when executing. A comment starts with //
and includes all the subsequent text on that line.
Whitespace - Answer blank spaces (space and tab characters) between items within a
statement, and to newlines.
Moore's Law - Answer The trend of switch sizes halving about every two years.
Embedded computer - Answer a computer inside another electrical device, like inside a TV,
car, printer, thermostat, satellite, etc.
Bit - Answer A single 1 or 0. On is called 1, and off is 0. Binary digit.
Byte - Answer 8 bits. A chunk of something.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) - Answer a popular code for
characters in a unique bit code. Uses 7 bits per code, and has codes for 128 characters.
Developed in 1963.
Unicode - Answer another character encoding standard, published in 1991, whose codes can
have more bits than ASCII and thus can represent over 100,000 items, such as symbols and non-
English characters.