BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 5 of 144

Correct — D, All of the above. All four names are genuine programming languages, and the item is engineered to make that hard to accept by choosing three names that are also animals. The test to apply is documentary rather than intuitive: a real language has a named designer, a first-appearance date, a licence, a platform and a file extension. All four have every one of them. Cobra is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented language designed by Charles Esterbrook and developed by Cobra Language LLC; it first appeared in 2006, runs on Microsoft .NET and Mono, is released under the MIT licence, uses the file extension ".cobra", and takes its influences from Python, Eiffel, C# and Objective-C. It supports strong, static, dynamic and inferred typing in one language and has unit tests and contracts built into the syntax. Its last release, version 0.9.6, dates from 23 December 2013 — but a language that is no longer actively developed is still a language. Python is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted language that Guido van Rossum began writing over the Christmas holidays of 1989 at CWI in Amsterdam and first released on 20 February 1991; it is dynamically and strongly typed, groups statements by indentation instead of braces, is stewarded by the Python Software Foundation, and is implemented in CPython, PyPy, MicroPython, Jython and IronPython among others. Squirrel is a multi-paradigm scripting language designed by Alberto Demichelis, first released on 6 September 2003, MIT-licensed, using the extension ".nut", influenced by C++, JavaScript, Lua and Python, and built deliberately small so that it fits inside the size, memory-bandwidth and real-time budgets of a host application — which is why it turns up embedded in game engines from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to Apex Legends. Java is a statically and strongly typed, garbage-collected, object-oriented language designed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and first released on 23 May 1995; its source compiles to bytecode that runs on any Java Virtual Machine, the "write once, run anywhere" idea that made it the standard enterprise language. Four out of four qualify, so the answer is all of them.

• (a)Only 1 and 2 — Keeps the two names that sound most like software and discards Squirrel and Java. Discarding Java is the fatal move: it first appeared on 23 May 1995, Sun shipped Java 1.0 the following year, Oracle has been its steward since acquiring Sun in 2009-10, and it is one of the most widely deployed languages in the world. A candidate reaches this option only by reading "Java" as the Indonesian island or the coffee rather than the language — an easy slip in a paper that also carries world geography, and the reason examiners like planting the word here.
• (b)Only 3 and 4 — Exactly backwards. It keeps Squirrel and Java, the two a gamer or a software professional would recognise, and throws out Cobra and Python as animal names planted to mislead. But Python is the single best-known language on the list, released on 20 February 1991 and the most widely used of the four in teaching and in industry, and Cobra is a documented .NET language with a named designer, an MIT licence and a release history. The rule this option violates is that a name tells you nothing about whether a thing is a language: Python was named after a comedy series and Java after coffee.
• (c)Only 1, 2 and 3 — Drops only Java, the least defensible exclusion of the four, since Java is the language behind the Java Virtual Machine, Android's original application stack and most enterprise back-ends. Note that the Android connection is often mis-remembered as a disqualifier — Android's bytecode is not JVM bytecode and runs on its own virtual machine tuned for low-memory devices — but that is a difference of runtime, not of language. This option is usually a mis-mark or a half-second of doubt rather than a reasoned choice.

Programming languages are usually sorted along three axes, and the four names here sit at different points on all of them. First, how the code is run: Python is interpreted, Java is compiled to an intermediate bytecode that a virtual machine executes, Cobra compiles to the .NET Common Language Runtime, and Squirrel is compiled to bytecode for a small virtual machine that lives inside the host program. Second, how types are handled: Java is statically typed, so a variable's type is fixed and checked before the program runs; Python and Squirrel are dynamically typed, so the check happens at run time; and Cobra unusually offers static, dynamic and inferred typing in the same language. Third, what the language is for: Python, Java and Cobra are general-purpose, while Squirrel is an embedded scripting language, designed not to build whole applications but to be dropped inside a larger program where memory and response time are tightly constrained. A fourth axis is worth adding for exams — lineage. Languages are almost never invented from nothing: Cobra names Python, Eiffel, C# and Objective-C as its influences, Squirrel names C++, JavaScript, Lua and Python, and Java names Simula 67, C++, Smalltalk and Ada 83 among others. Naming is the last thing to know, because it is what this question exploits: languages are routinely named after jokes, animals, places and drinks, and the name carries no information about whether the thing is a language.

Treat this as a recognition test and look for a reason to exclude an item rather than a reason to include it. No item supplies one — each of the four has a documented designer, a first-appearance date and a platform — and that is the discriminating move: since all four are genuinely languages, the question cannot be decided by weighing them against each other, only by testing each name separately against the record. The pull towards a partial answer comes entirely from the set being zoological: three animals and a word that is also an island and a coffee, which primes a candidate to assume some entries must be decoys. Python is the case that demolishes that instinct, because its own documentation does: the python.org FAQ records that Guido van Rossum was reading published scripts from Monty Python's Flying Circus and wanted a name that was "short, unique, and slightly mysterious", so the language is not named after the snake at all. The one genuine memory hazard here is Cobra, which candidates confuse with COBOL, the Common Business-Oriented Language of 1959 that still runs banking back-office systems. They are unrelated and forty-seven years apart: COBOL is a 1950s business language descended from Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC, Cobra a 2006 .NET language descended from Python. If a name on a list of this kind is unfamiliar, the safe default in a "which of these are X" item is to assume the examiner picked obscure but real examples rather than invented ones — inventing a fake name is a much rarer examiner move than choosing a rare true one.

• Cobra: multi-paradigm object-oriented language designed by Charles Esterbrook, developer Cobra Language LLC, first appeared 2006, runs on Microsoft .NET and Mono, MIT licence, file extension ".cobra", influenced by Python, Eiffel, C# and Objective-C; supports strong, static, dynamic and inferred typing with unit tests and contracts built in; final release 0.9.6 on 23 December 2013.
• Python: begun by Guido van Rossum in the Christmas holidays of 1989 at CWI, Amsterdam, and first released on 20 February 1991; interpreted, dynamically and strongly typed, groups statements by indentation, stewarded by the Python Software Foundation, with CPython, PyPy, MicroPython, Jython and IronPython among its implementations.
• python.org's own FAQ states that van Rossum named the language after the BBC comedy Monty Python's Flying Circus because he wanted a name that was short, unique and slightly mysterious — not after the snake.
• Squirrel: designed by Alberto Demichelis and first released on 6 September 2003; a multi-paradigm scripting language under the MIT licence, extension ".nut", influenced by C++, JavaScript, Lua and Python, built to fit the size, memory-bandwidth and real-time requirements of host applications such as video games, where it is embedded rather than run on its own.
• Java: designed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and first released on 23 May 1995, with Java 1.0 shipping in 1996; statically and strongly typed, memory-safe and garbage-collected, its syntax following C and C++, and its source compiling to bytecode that runs on any Java Virtual Machine — the "write once, run anywhere" model. Sun open-sourced much of the JVM in November 2006 and Oracle became its steward after acquiring Sun in 2009-10.
• Cobra should not be confused with COBOL, the Common Business-Oriented Language designed in 1959, a separate and far older language still used in banking and insurance back-office systems.
• Android runs Java-language applications on its own virtual machine with a bytecode format incompatible with JVM bytecode, tuned for low-memory devices — a difference of runtime, not of language.

• Assuming that an animal name means the item is a decoy — Cobra, Python and Squirrel are all real languages, and Python's name comes from a comedy series, not the snake
• Confusing Cobra with COBOL — a 2000s .NET language against a 1959 business-data language
• Reading "Java" as the Indonesian island, especially in a paper that also carries geography questions

BPSC's science and technology block leans on flat recognition — a short list of names with a codes answer, testing whether a candidate has met the vocabulary rather than whether they understand it, and on this pattern the whole set is frequently correct because the examiner's idea of difficulty is picking obscure real examples rather than fake ones. UPSC almost never asks whether a given name is a programming language. It asks instead which technology a named term belongs to, pairing terms with their fields so that the trap is a name that suggests the wrong discipline — Belle II sounding like artificial intelligence when it is a particle detector — or it asks what a technology can actually do at its present state of development. Recognition wins the BPSC mark; placement and capability win the UPSC one.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is a lightweight scripting language designed to be embedded in applications such as video games?

  • (a)Squirrel
  • (b)COBOL
  • (c)FORTRAN
  • (d)Pascal

  Answer(a) Squirrel — released in 2003 and designed for the size, memory and real-time limits of game engines; COBOL is a business-data language, FORTRAN a scientific-computing language and Pascal a teaching language.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Python programming language takes its name from which of the following?

  • (a)The snake of the same name
  • (b)The BBC comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus
  • (c)An acronym for a programming standard
  • (d)The surname of its designer

  Answer(b) The BBC comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus — python.org's own FAQ records that Guido van Rossum was reading its published scripts and wanted a name that was short, unique and slightly mysterious.