The term routine derives from subroutine, which is a more common term in languages like BASIC where one actually creates SUBroutines. (BASIC actually had a difference between a SUBroutine and a FUNCTION, but nevertheless…) From the Wikipedia entry: In computer science, a subroutine (also called procedure, function, routine, method, or subprogram) is a portion of … Read more
Semantics are the meaning of various elements in the program (or whatever). For example, let’s look at this code: int width, numberOfChildren; Both of these variables are integers. From the compiler’s point of view, they are exactly the same. However, judging by the names, one is the width of something, while the other is a … Read more
Channeling Michael Feathers: Code without tests.
“hard coding” means putting something into your source code. If you are not hard coding, then you do something like prompting the user for the data, or allow the user to put the data on the command line, or something like that. So, to hard code the location of the file as being on the … Read more