Glossary

Clone

Making a copy of a git repository on another computer, whether locally or remotely.

Copy-Paste

Copying text to your computer’s ‘clipboard’ and pasting it into another location.

Copying can be done many ways, including selecting text with your mouse, right-clicking then selecting ‘copy’, by selecting text and using your computer’s ‘hotkey’ for copying (), or, in the course documents, by clicking on the ‘copy’ icon in most code chunks.

To paste, you can either right-click and select ‘Paste’, or use your system’s ‘hotkey’ ().

Find, or

You can find text in most pages or documents by either typing , then typing in the text you want to find in the dialogue box that pops up.

Fork (noun)

A copy of a repostory which retains the history of the original. Forks can be merged with the original, because of the shared history.

Formal

In computational linguistics, ‘formal’ isn’t the opposite of ‘casual’. It’s about any system or language which has a strict set of acceptable symbols, and how they can be combined.

GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces are a ‘development environment’, running on a Virtual Machine. They’re like mini computers you can access through your web browser that get created just for the repository you launch one in. The actual memory and computation are being run on GitHub’s physical computers.

Index (noun)

A value (usually an integer) that denotes the location of a valuable in an indexable object.

Index (verb)

To use a numeric index on an object to return the value at that index.

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

A piece of software to make writing and maintaining code easier. Some things nice IDEs do are

• provide visual support for coding. For example, arranging file browsers and document editors in a tidy way, or doing syntax highlighting,

• provide hints, and autocomplete recommendations for code,

• bring together multiple pieces of software to interact nicely together.

Local (adj)

Describes anything that exists or happens on the actual device you’re interacting with. For example, if you have a Microsoft Word document on your computer that ends in .docx, it is probably ‘local’ (even if theres a ‘remote’ copy somewhere). These days, it’s not always obvious if things happen locally or remotely. If you have a phone that does facial recognition on pictures you take, if the facial recognition program runs on your phone, it’s ‘local’. But if the picture needs to get uploaded to Apple or Google first, then the facial recognition is ‘remote’.

Merge

The act of combining two diverging git histories into one new history. Two forks can be merged, as can two branches.

Plain text

Documents that contain only text.

Pull request

A request sent from fork or branch A to be merged into fork or branch B.

Remote (adj)

Describes anything that exists or happens on a different device than the one you’re interacting with. For example, if you edit a Google Doc, the actual document is stored on a Google computer, not on the device you’re editing.

Slice (verb)

To pull out a range of values from an object, defined by a starting and stopping position.

Tab Autocomplete

Many programming applications have “Tab Autocomplete” suggestions that allow you to type in just a few letters of the command, function, or variable you want to use, and then hit TabTab.

Terminal

A text based interface to your computer. Instead of clicking on visual icons to, say, open a folder and look at its contents, you type in text based commands like cd and ls.

Virtual Machine/VM

Virtual Machines are simulations of computers. It’s like having an encapsulated computer, running its own operating system and programs, that borrows memory and computing resources from computers it’s running on.