This page documents a list of words that might be unfamiliar to you but end up getting used quite a few times throughout this series of posts.

C

Console

A program on your computer that presents you with a black box with a line of text that you can type after. From the console window, you can execute programs.

Console Application

A program that does things exclusively within the console window, and thus can be run from the console window without opening any other windows.

Command-Line

The line of text within your console that prompts you to enter a command

C#

A modern programming language designed by Microsoft that’s popular for writing all kinds of user-facing applications, including desktop applications, web applications, and video games.

D

Data Type

A category of information that the computer can store and represent digitally. Common and built-in ones are strings (text data), characters, integers, booleans (“truthy” values), and decimal numbers.

E

Execute

To “execute” a program is to take a bunch of code and have the computer do what the code tells it to do. This is equivalent to “running” a program. It is what typically happens when you double-click a file whose extension is .exe on Windows.

Expression

An expression is a piece of code that’s either pure data (e.g. a number or a string) or can be simplified to pure data, such as addition (35 + 43), string combination (“Hello " + “Bika”), or variable substitution (playerName gets simplified to “Sakamoto”).

K

Keyword

A word that the programming language being used explicitly recognizes and reserves for its special meaning. These words often can’t be used as, e.g., variable names since they’re reserved for use in other ways. Examples are the names of types (string, int, etc.) and the var keyword.

P

Print

In the programming world, “print” rarely means “print out on a piece of paper using a physical device”. Usually, it means to display text somewhere, usually the console window.

Programming Language

A programming language specifies a way for us to communicate with our computers and demand that our computers perform certain tasks. There are many of these and in this book we only focus on one: C#.

S

Statement

A statement is a command we give to the computer within our code. In response, the computer will perform some action.

V

Variable

A variable associates a name with some piece of information, so that we may refer to that information by its name rather than copying that information wherever we need it. This is especially necessary if, for some reason, the information can only be reliably produced once. For example, if the information we’re storing comes from using Console.ReadLine, we cannot get the same information by using Console.ReadLine again, since we would get the next thing the user typed, not the first thing they typed. Instead, we’re forced to store whatever the user types in a variable if we intend to be able to refer to it again.