scheme

Scheme is a high-level functional programming language. A minimalist dialect of the Lisp programming language, Scheme focuses largely on simplicity, having a very basic syntax and only including core features thought necessary to the language.

(define (factorial n)
(cond ((= n 0) 1)
(else (* n (factorial (- n 1))))))

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters January 30, 2004

Prolog

Prolog (PROgramming LOGic) is the predominant logic programming language. It is based on first-order predicate calculus, but is restricted to using horn clauses.

father(william, diana).
father(jeff, william).
grandfather(X,Z) <= parents(X, Y), parents(Y, Z).
?granfather(A, diana).

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters January 30, 2004

unschooling

A form of homeschooling where there is no set curriculum or regular classwork. Instead, a more student-lead schooling is used where learning is not simply defined as, for e.g., 'reading a math book'. Most activities can be educational.

People who are unschooled tend to do far better than average when they attend college.

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters January 30, 2004

superscalar processor

A form of parallel processing using a single computer processor containing multiple pipelines. Intel's 80486 and Pentium processors were of this type.
Also called superscalar architecture.

Superscalar processors can reduce bottlenecks and increase throughput.

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters February 16, 2005

Brainfuck

A very minimalist programming language, having a total of eight instructions. Brainfuck is turning complete. Programs written in BF are necessarily obfuscated, as the entire set of commands are as follows: + - < > , .

Hello World in Brainfuck:
++++++++++>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-
>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.
>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters January 30, 2004

ruby

A purely object-oriented imperative programming language. Used mostly for scripting, and generally run using an interpreter. Syntactically similar to Ada and Perl, but with Smalltalkesque object-orientation.

I wrote a Ruby script to process my mail.

by Luca Kaceem Butler Masters January 29, 2004