Glossary#

Programming Concepts#

escaping#: How to indicate to the computer that an operator inside of a string should not be interpreted but instead be treated be treated as part of the string. For example, you would need to escape a single-quote in a string surrounded by single-quotes, a double-quote in a string surrounded by double-quotes, and the escape character in any string. In Python (and many other languages) the escape character is a backslash (\).
immutable#: A value that cannot be changed. In Python these include numbers, strings and tuples.
iterate#
iteration#
iterating#: To repeat over a unit of code, usually within a loop. Each repetition is called an iteration.
key#: A value used to retrieve another value from a dictionary.
mutable#: A value that can be changed.
string concatenation#
concatenation#
concatenate#: Joining two or more strings together.
interpolation#
string interpolation#
variable interpolation#
variable substitution#
variable expansion#: When values are replaced for their respective placeholders inside of a string literal. In Python the recommended way to do this is with f-strings.
loop#: A block of code that will repeat until a specified condition is reached. For example for-loops and while-loops.
literal#: A value in its raw form, (for example 25 or "text"), as opposed to being referenced in a variable.

boolean#
bool#: True or False values.
dictionary#
dict#: A collection of key-value pairs.
floating-point number#
float#: Fractions or numbers with decimal points.
integer#
int#: Whole numbers values.
list#: A collection of values. In Python lists are mutable and they are defined by surrounding the comma-separated values with square-bracket ([]).
string#
str#: Text values. They are surrounded by single or double quotes. In Python, there is no difference between using single or double quotes, except which characters you have to escape.
none#
null#: A special value that indicates nothingness which is different from the value zero or an empty string. In Python it is referred to as None without quotes. In other languages: null, nil.

code editor#
editor#: A text editing program specifically for code with features like syntax highlighting and code formatting. Some examples include VS Code, Atom, Sublime, Textmate and Vim.
compile#: The process by which the computer translates source code from one programming language to a lower-level language to create an executable program. A language that must be compiled is called a compiled language and the program that does this for a particular programming language is called a compiler. Python is an interpreted language, so it does not need to be compiled. Some compiled languages include C/C++, Java and Go.
integrated development environment#
IDE#: A program dedicated to software development usually including a code editor, debugger, version control management, and build/execution features. Examples include repl.it, Eclipse, Thonny, and Pycharm.
interpret#: The process by which the computer directly executes source code without that code needing to be compiled first. The program that does this for a particular programming language is called an interpreter. A programming language that does not need to be compiled is called an interpreted language or sometimes a scripting language. Python is an interpreted language and Python code is executed by the Python Interpreter. Some other interpreted languages include Ruby, PHP and Perl.