1.
Computer program
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A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer. A computer requires programs to function, and typically executes the programs instructions in a processing unit. A computer program is written by a computer programmer in a programming language. From the program in its form of source code, a compiler can derive machine code—a form consisting of instructions that the computer can directly execute. Alternatively, a program may be executed with the aid of an interpreter. A part of a program that performs a well-defined task is known as an algorithm. A collection of programs, libraries and related data are referred to as software. Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines, such as software or system software. The earliest programmable machines preceded the invention of the digital computer, in 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard devised a loom that would weave a pattern by following a series of perforated cards. Patterns could be weaved and repeated by arranging the cards, in 1837, Charles Babbage was inspired by Jacquards loom to attempt to build the Analytical Engine. The names of the components of the device were borrowed from the textile industry. In the textile industry, yarn was brought from the store to be milled, the device would have had a store—memory to hold 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each. Numbers from the store would then have then transferred to the mill. It was programmed using two sets of perforated cards—one to direct the operation and the other for the input variables, however, after more than 17,000 pounds of the British governments money, the thousands of cogged wheels and gears never fully worked together. During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada Lovelace translated the memoir of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, the memoir covered the Analytical Engine. The translation contained Note G which completely detailed a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine and this note is recognized by some historians as the worlds first written computer program. In 1936, Alan Turing introduced the Universal Turing machine—a theoretical device that can model every computation that can be performed on a Turing complete computing machine and it is a finite-state machine that has an infinitely long read/write tape. The machine can move the back and forth, changing its contents as it performs an algorithm
2.
Scientific method
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The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning, experiments need to be designed to test hypotheses. The most important part of the method is the experiment. The scientific method is a process, which usually begins with observations about the natural world. Human beings are naturally inquisitive, so often come up with questions about things they see or hear. The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested in various ways, in general, the strongest tests of hypotheses come from carefully controlled and replicated experiments that gather empirical data. Depending on how well the tests match the predictions, the hypothesis may require refinement. If a particular hypothesis becomes very well supported a theory may be developed. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features are shared in common between them. The overall process of the method involves making conjectures, deriving predictions from them as logical consequences. A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on knowledge obtained while formulating the question, the hypothesis might be very specific or it might be broad. Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments, the purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis. Experiments can take anywhere from a college lab to CERNs Large Hadron Collider. There are difficulties in a statement of method, however. Though the scientific method is presented as a fixed sequence of steps. Not all steps take place in scientific inquiry, and are not always in the same order. Some philosophers and scientists have argued there is no scientific method, such as Lee Smolin. Nola and Sankey remark that For some, the idea of a theory of scientific method is yester-years debate
3.
Synopsys
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Synopsys, Inc. an American company, is the leading company by sales in the Electronic Design Automation industry. Synopsys first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool, Synopsys offers a wide range of other products used in the design of an application-specific integrated circuit. Products include logic synthesis, behavioral synthesis, place and route, static timing analysis, formal verification, the simulators include development and debugging environments which assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems. Founded in 1986 by Dr. Aart J.1994, acquired Cadis, Aachen, through this acquisition Synopsys got the communication systems and DSP design tool suit named COSSAP. COSSAP stood for Communication System Simulation and Application Processor, Synopsys carried out various communication design and consulting activities using this tool. The Cadis group was a development initiative from Institute for Integrated Signal Processing Systems, RWTH Aachen, spearheaded by Professor Heinrich Meyr. COSSAP was a product to SPW from Cadence. Synopsys stopped support on COSSAP since 2003 and is now promoting the enhanced tool Cocentric System Studio,1997, acquired EPIC Design Technology Inc. USA1997, acquired Viewlogic Systems, Inc, USA1998, acquired Systems Science, Inc. June 6,2002, merger with Avanti Corporation, USA and this was, by far, Synopsys most significant and controversial acquisition. At the time Avanti was the #4 company in the EDA industry, September 12,2002, acquired Co-Design Automation, Inc. Co-Design pioneered the Superlog language, a superset of the popular Verilog hardware description language, extending its capabilities into verification, Superlog formed the basis of The SystemVerilog language standardized by Accelera in 2003. September 20,2002, acquired inSilicon Inc, USA March 3,2003, acquired Numerical Technologies, Inc. USA, a pioneer in design for manufacturing software which included CATS mask fracturing, Synopsys paid about $250 million in cash. February 23,2004, acquired Accelerant Networks, USA February 26,2004, acquired assets of Analog Design Automation, USA October 2004, acquired assets of Monterey Design Systems, Inc. USA October 18,2004, acquired Cascade Semiconductor Solutions Inc, USA November 2,2004, acquired Integrated Systems Engineering AG, Switzerland, a TCAD company. November 2,2004, acquired assets of LEDA Design, Inc, USA, a developer of mixed-signal intellectual property. 2004, After acquiring Monterey Arset and Leda Design, Opened Synopsys Armenia, home to 8% of the companys worldwide engineering force
4.
Agile software development
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It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. These principles support the definition and continuing evolution of software development methods. The term agile was first coined for this in 2001, in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, Incremental software development methods can be traced back to 1957. Evolutionary project management and adaptive software development emerged in the early 1970s, although these originated before the publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, they are now collectively referred to as agile methods. In February 2001, seventeen software developers met at the Snowbird resort in Utah to discuss lightweight development methods, among others Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, and Alistair Cockburn. By these terms, they meant, Individuals and interactions Self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions like co-location, Working software Working software is more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings. Customer collaboration Requirements cannot be collected at the beginning of the software development cycle. Responding to change Agile methods are focused on quick responses to change, some of the authors formed the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes software development according to the manifestos values and principles. Introducing the manifesto on behalf of the Agile Alliance, Jim Highsmith said, The Agile movement is not anti-methodology and we want to restore a balance. We embrace modeling, but not in order to file some diagram in a dusty corporate repository and we embrace documentation, but not hundreds of pages of never-maintained and rarely-used tomes. We plan, but recognize the limits of planning in a turbulent environment and those who would brand proponents of XP or SCRUM or any of the other Agile Methodologies as hackers are ignorant of both the methodologies and the original definition of the term hacker. Schwaber left the Scrum Alliance in the fall of 2009, related disciplines, including project management and business analysis have extended or updated their bodies of knowledge and certifications to embrace working with agile methods. Most agile development methods break product development work into small increments that minimize the amount of up-front planning, iterations are short time frames that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working in all functions, planning, analysis, design, coding, unit testing. At the end of the iteration a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders and this minimizes overall risk and allows the product to adapt to changes quickly. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features. Working software is the measure of progress. No matter which development method is followed, every team should include a customer representative and this person is agreed by stakeholders to act on their behalf and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer questions throughout the iteration
5.
Decomposition (computer science)
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Decomposition in computer science, also known as factoring, is breaking a complex problem or system into parts that are easier to conceive, understand, program, and maintain. There are different types of defined in computer sciences, In structured programming. Structured analysis breaks down a system from the system context level to system functions. Object-oriented decomposition, on the hand, breaks a large system down into progressively smaller classes or objects that are responsible for some part of the problem domain. According to Booch, algorithmic decomposition is a part of object-oriented analysis and design. More generally, functional decomposition in computer science is a technique for mastering the complexity of the function of a model, a functional model of a system is thereby replaced by a series of functional models of subsystems. A decomposition paradigm in programming is a strategy for organizing a program as a number of parts. Usually the aim of using a paradigm is to optimize some metric related to program complexity. Most decomposition paradigms suggest breaking down a program into parts so as to minimize the static dependencies among those parts, some popular decomposition paradigms are the procedural, modules, abstract data type and object oriented ones. A decomposition diagram shows a function, process, organization, data subject area, or other type of object broken down into lower level. For example, decomposition diagrams may represent organizational structure or functional decomposition into processes, decomposition diagrams provide a logical hierarchical decomposition of a system
6.
Text editor
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A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files. Such programs are known as notepad software, following the Microsoft Notepad. Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, there are important differences between plain text files created by a text editor and document files created by word processors such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. A plain text file uses a character encoding such as UTF-8 or ASCII to represent numbers, letters, the only non-printing characters in the file that can be used to format the text are newline, tab, and formfeed. Plain text files are displayed using a monospace font so horizontal alignment. Although they are viewed with formatting, documents using markup languages are stored in plain text files that contain a combination of human-readable text. For example, web pages are plain text with HTML tags to achieve formatting when rendered by a web browser, many web pages also contain embedded JavaScript that is interpreted by the browser. When both formats are available, the user must select with care, saving a plain text file in a word-processor format adds formatting information that can make the text unreadable by a program that expects plain text. Conversely, saving a document as plain text removes any formatting information. Before text editors existed, computer text was punched into cards with keypunch machines, physical boxes of these thin cardboard cards were then inserted into a card-reader. Magnetic tape and disk card-image files created from such card decks often had no characters at all. An alternative to cards was punched paper tape and it could be created by some teleprinters, which used special characters to indicate ends of records. The first text editors were line editors oriented to teleprinter- or typewriter-style terminals without displays, commands effected edits to a file at an imaginary insertion point called the cursor. Edits were verified by typing a command to print a small section of the file, in some line editors, the cursor could be moved by commands that specified the line number in the file, text strings for which to search, and eventually regular expressions. Line editors were major improvements over keypunching, some line editors could be used by keypunch, editing commands could be taken from a deck of cards and applied to a specified file. Some common line editors supported a mode in which change commands displayed the altered lines. When computer terminals with video screens became available, screen-based text editors became common, one of the earliest full-screen editors was O26, which was written for the operator console of the CDC6000 series computers in 1967. Another early full-screen editor was vi, written in the 1970s, it is still a standard editor on Unix and Linux operating systems
7.
Software bug
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A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made in either a source code or its design, or in components. A few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code, a program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Bugs trigger errors that may have ripple effects, Bugs may have subtle effects or cause the program to crash or freeze the computer. Others qualify as security bugs and might, for example, enable a user to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges. Bugs in code that controls the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine were directly responsible for patient deaths in the 1980s. In 1996, the European Space Agencys US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 rocket had to be destroyed less than a minute after launch due to a bug in the guidance computer program. In June 1994, a Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, for instance, Thomas Edison wrote the following words in a letter to an associate in 1878, It has been just so in all of my inventions. The Middle English word bugge is the basis for the terms bugbear and bugaboo, baffle Ball, the first mechanical pinball game, was advertised as being free of bugs in 1931. Problems with military gear during World War II were referred to as bugs, isaac Asimov uses the term bug to relate to issues with a robot in his short story Catch That Rabbit, published in 1944, and included in his well-known collection of short stories I, Robot. From page 1 of Catch That Rabbit, U. S, robots had to get the bugs out of the multiple robot, and there were plenty of bugs, and there are always at least half a dozen bugs left for the field-testing. The term bug was used in an account by computer pioneer Grace Hopper, operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book, stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitches in a program a bug. Hopper did not find the bug, as she readily acknowledged, the date in the log book was September 9,1947. Hopper loved to recount the story and this log book, complete with attached moth, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The related term debug also appears to predate its usage in computing, an analysing process must equally have been performed in order to furnish the Analytical Engine with the necessary operative data, and that herein may also lie a possible source of error. Granted that the mechanism is unerring in its processes, the cards may give it wrong orders. The report highlights the need for reform in the field of software vulnerability discovery, government researchers, companies, and cyber security experts are the people who typically discover software flaws
8.
Software development process
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In software engineering, a software development methodology is splitting of software development work into distinct phases containing activities with the intent of better planning and management. It is often considered a subset of the development life cycle. The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a team to develop or maintain an application. For example, there are many software development processes that fit the spiral life-cycle model. A variety of such frameworks have evolved over the years, each with its own recognized strengths, one software development methodology framework is not necessarily suitable for use by all projects. Each of the available methodology frameworks are best suited to specific kinds of projects, based on technical, organizational, project. Software development organizations implement process methodologies to ease the process of development, sometimes, contractors may require methodologies employed, an example is the U. S. defense industry, which requires a rating based on process models to obtain contracts. The international standard for describing the method of selecting, implementing and monitoring the life cycle for software is ISO/IEC12207, a decades-long goal has been to find repeatable, predictable processes that improve productivity and quality. Some try to systematize or formalize the seemingly unruly task of designing software, others apply project management techniques to designing software. Organizations may create a Software Engineering Process Group, which is the point for process improvement. These details are not dictated by the choice of model or general methodology. The software development methodology framework didnt emerge until the 1960s, according to Elliott the systems development life cycle can be considered to be the oldest formalized methodology framework for building information systems. The main target of this framework in the 1960s was to develop large scale functional business systems in an age of large scale business conglomerates. Information systems activities revolved around heavy data processing and number crunching routines, in some cases a sponsor or maintenance organization distributes an official set of documents that describe the process. Specific examples include, 1970s Structured programming since 1969 Cap Gemini SDM, originally from PANDATA, several software development approaches have been used since the origin of information technology, in two main categories. Typically an approach or a combination of approaches is chosen by management or a development team, Royce in 1970 although Royce did not use the term waterfall in this article. The basic principles are, Project is divided into phases, with some overlap. Emphasis is on planning, time schedules, target dates, budgets, written documentation is an explicit deliverable of each phase
9.
Integrated development environment
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An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a code editor, build automation tools. Most modern IDEs have intelligent code completion, some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain a compiler, interpreter, or both, others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not. The boundary between an integrated development environment and other parts of the software development environment is not well-defined. Sometimes a version control system, or various tools to simplify the construction of a Graphical User Interface, are integrated, many modern IDEs also have a class browser, an object browser, and a class hierarchy diagram, for use in object-oriented software development. Integrated development environments are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tight-knit components with similar user interfaces, IDEs present a single program in which all development is done. This program typically provides many features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software and this contrasts with software development using unrelated tools, such as vi, GCC or make. One aim of the IDE is to reduce the necessary to piece together multiple development utilities. Reducing that setup time can increase productivity, in cases where learning to use the IDE is faster than manually integrating all of the individual tools. Tighter integration of all development tasks has the potential to improve overall productivity beyond just helping with setup tasks, for example, code can be continuously parsed while it is being edited, providing instant feedback when syntax errors are introduced. That can speed learning a new programming language and its associated libraries, some IDEs are dedicated to a specific programming language, allowing a feature set that most closely matches the programming paradigms of the language. However, there are many multiple-language IDEs, while most modern IDEs are graphical, text-based IDEs such as Turbo Pascal were in popular use before the widespread availability of windowing systems like Microsoft Windows and the X Window System. They commonly use function keys or hotkeys to execute frequently used commands or macros, IDEs initially became possible when developing via a console or terminal. Early systems could not support one, since programs were prepared using flowcharts, dartmouth BASIC was the first language to be created with an IDE. Its IDE was command-based, and therefore did not look much like the menu-driven, however it integrated editing, file management, compilation, debugging and execution in a manner consistent with a modern IDE. Maestro I is a product from Softlab Munich and was the worlds first integrated development environment for software, Maestro I was installed for 22,000 programmers worldwide. Until 1989,6,000 installations existed in the Federal Republic of Germany, Maestro was arguably the world leader in this field during the 1970s and 1980s. Today one of the last Maestro I can be found in the Museum of Information Technology at Arlington, one of the first IDEs with a plug-in concept was Softbench
10.
Eclipse (software)
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Eclipse is an integrated development environment used in computer programming, and is the most widely used Java IDE. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment and it can also be used to develop documents with LaTeX and packages for the software Mathematica. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools for Java and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, the initial codebase originated from IBM VisualAge. The Eclipse software development kit, which includes the Java development tools, is meant for Java developers and it was one of the first IDEs to run under GNU Classpath and it runs without problems under IcedTea. Eclipse was inspired by the Smalltalk-based VisualAge family of integrated development environment products, although fairly successful, a major drawback of the VisualAge products was that developed code was not in a component-based software engineering model. Instead, all code for a project was held in a compressed lump, individual classes could not be easily accessed, certainly not outside the tool. A team primarily at the IBM Cary NC lab developed the new product as a Java-based replacement, in November 2001, a consortium was formed with a board of stewards to further the development of Eclipse as open-source software. It is estimated that IBM had already invested nearly $40 million by that time, the original members were Borland, IBM, Merant, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software, Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft, and WebGain. The number of stewards increased to over 80 by the end of 2003, in January 2004, the Eclipse Foundation was created. Eclipse 3.0 selected the OSGi Service Platform specifications as the runtime architecture, the Association for Computing Machinery recognized Eclipse with the 2011 ACM Software Systems Award on 26 April 2012. The Eclipse Public License is the license under which Eclipse projects are released. Some projects require dual licensing, for which the Eclipse Distribution License is available, Eclipse was originally released under the Common Public License, but was later re-licensed under the Eclipse Public License. The Free Software Foundation has said that both licenses are free software licenses, but are incompatible with the GNU General Public License, different versions of Eclipse have been given different science-related names. The versions named after Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede, which are moons of Jupiter, were followed by a named after Galileo the discoverer of those moons. These were followed by two sun-themed names, Helios of Greek mythology, and Indigo, one of the seven colors of a rainbow, the version after that, Juno, has a triple meaning, a Roman mythological figure, an asteroid, and a spacecraft to Jupiter. Kepler, Luna, and Mars continued the theme, and then a new theme of chemical elements began with Neon. Since 2006 the Foundation has coordinated an annual Simultaneous Release, each release includes the Eclipse Platform and several other Eclipse projects. As of 2008, each Simultaneous Release has occurred on the 4th Wednesday of June, Eclipse uses plug-ins to provide all the functionality within and on top of the runtime system
11.
Vulnerability (computing)
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In computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a systems information assurance. Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements, a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw, to exploit a vulnerability, an attacker must have at least one applicable tool or technique that can connect to a system weakness. In this frame, vulnerability is also known as the attack surface, Vulnerability management is the cyclical practice of identifying, classifying, remediating, and mitigating vulnerabilities. This practice generally refers to software vulnerabilities in computing systems, a security risk may be classified as a vulnerability. The use of vulnerability with the meaning of risk can lead to confusion. The risk is tied to the potential of a significant loss, then there are vulnerabilities without risk, for example when the affected asset has no value. A vulnerability with one or more instances of working and fully implemented attacks is classified as an exploitable vulnerability — a vulnerability for which an exploit exists. Constructs in programming languages that are difficult to use properly can be a source of vulnerabilities. The Open Group defines vulnerability in as, The probability that threat capability exceeds the ability to resist the threat. e. The strength of a control as compared to a measure of force. That could be exploited by a threat to gain unauthorized access to information or to disrupt critical processing, 3) In computer security, any weakness or flaw existing in a system. The attack or harmful event, or the opportunity available to an agent to mount that attack. The system computes through the application of state transitions that change the state of the system, all states reachable from a given initial state using a set of state transitions fall into the class of authorized or unauthorized, as defined by a security policy. In this paper, the definitions of classes and transitions is considered axiomatic. A vulnerable state is a state from which an unauthorized state can be reached using authorized state transitions. A compromised state is the state so reached, an attack is a sequence of authorized state transitions which end in a compromised state. By definition, an attack begins in a vulnerable state, a vulnerability is a characterization of a vulnerable state which distinguishes it from all non-vulnerable states. If generic, the vulnerability may characterize many vulnerable states, if specific, a weakness in system security procedures, hardware design, internal controls, etc. which could be exploited to gain unauthorized access to classified or sensitive information
12.
Abstraction (software engineering)
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In software engineering and computer science, abstraction is a technique for arranging complexity of computer systems. It works by establishing a level of complexity on which a person interacts with the system, the programmer works with an idealized interface and can add additional levels of functionality that would otherwise be too complex to handle. In addition, a task of sending a message across continents would be extremely complex if the programmer had to start with a piece of fiber optic cable. By using layers of complexity that have created to abstract away the physical cables and network layout, and presenting the programmer with a virtual data channel. Abstraction can apply to control or to data, Control abstraction is the abstraction of actions while data abstraction is that of data structures, Control abstraction involves the use of subroutines and control flow abstractions Data abstraction allows handling pieces of data in meaningful ways. For example, it is the motivation behind the datatype. The notion of an object in object-oriented programming can be viewed as a way to combine abstractions of data, the same abstract definition can be used as a common interface for a family of objects with different implementations and behaviors but which share the same meaning. The inheritance mechanism in object-oriented programming can be used to define a class as the common interface. The recommendation that programmers use abstractions whenever suitable in order to avoid duplication is known as the abstraction principle, the requirement that a programming language provide suitable abstractions is also called the abstraction principle. Computing mostly operates independently of the world, The hardware implements a model of computation that is interchangeable with others. The software is structured in architectures to enable humans to create the enormous systems by concentrating on a few issues at a time and these architectures are made of specific choices of abstractions. Greenspuns Tenth Rule is an aphorism on how such an architecture is both inevitable and complex, a central form of abstraction in computing is language abstraction, new artificial languages are developed to express specific aspects of a system. Computer languages can be processed with a computer, an example of this abstraction process is the generational development of programming languages from the machine language to the assembly language and the high-level language. Each stage can be used as a stone for the next stage. The language abstraction continues for example in scripting languages and domain-specific programming languages, within a programming language, some features let the programmer create new abstractions. These include subroutines, modules, polymorphism, and software components, some other abstractions such as software design patterns and architectural styles remain invisible to a translator and operate only in the design of a system. Some abstractions try to limit the range of concepts a programmer needs to be aware of, some abstractions are designed to interoperate with other abstractions - for example, a programming language may contain a foreign function interface for making calls to the lower-level language. Different programming languages provide different types of abstraction, depending on the applications for the language
