Which of the following are computer languages?

1. Cobra

2. Python

3. Squirrel

4. Java Select the correct answer using the codes given below.

Question

Which of the following are computer languages? 1. Cobra 2. Python 3. Squirrel 4. Java Select the correct answer using the codes given below.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2023 Q5 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q5 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer