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RAM0 model: Schönhage's RAM0 machine has 6 instructions indicated by a single letter (the 6th "C xxx" seems to involve 'skip over next parameter'. Schönhage designated the accumulator with "z", "N" with "n", etc. Rather than Schönhage's mnemonics we will use the mnemonics developed above.
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Indirection comes from CPYAN working with store_A_via_N STAN, and from the peculiar indirection instruction LDAA .
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The definitional fact that any sort of counter machine without an unbounded register-"address" register must specify a register "r" by name indicates that the model requires "r" to be finite, although it is "unbounded" in the sense that the model implies no upper limit to the number of registers necessary to do its job. For example, we do not require r < 83,617,563,821,029,283,746 nor r < 2^1,000,001, etc.
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We can escape this restriction by providing an unbounded register to provide the address of the register that specifies an indirect address.
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With a few exceptions, these references are the same as those at Register machine.
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A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code – someone with skill in computer programming.
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The professional titles software developer and software engineer are used for jobs that require a programmer.
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Generally, a programmer writes code in a computer language and with an intent to build software that achieves some goal.
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Sometimes a programmer or job position is identified by the language used or target platform. For example, assembly programmer, web developer.
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The job titles that include programming tasks have differing connotations across the computer industry and to different individuals. The following are notable descriptions.
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A software developer primarily implements software based on specifications and fixes bugs. Other duties may include reviewing code changes and testing.
To achieve the required skills for the job, they might obtain a computer science or associate degree, attend a programming boot camp or be self-taught.
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A software engineer usually is responsible for the same tasks as a developer
plus broader responsibilities of software engineering including architecting and designing new features and applications, targeting new platforms, managing the software development lifecycle , leading a team of programmers, communicating with customers, managers and other engineers, considering system stability and quality, and exploring software development methodologies.
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Sometimes, a software engineer is required to have a degree in software engineering, computer engineering, or computer science. Some countries legally require an engineering degree to be called engineer.
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British countess and mathematician Ada Lovelace is often considered to be the first computer programmer.
She authored an algorithm, which was published in October 1842, for calculating Bernoulli numbers on the Charles Babbage analytical engine.
Because the machine was not completed in her lifetime, she never experienced the algorithm in action.
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In 1941, German civil engineer Konrad Zuse was the first person to execute a program on a working, program-controlled, electronic computer. From 1943 to 1945, per computer scientist Wolfgang K. Giloi and AI professor Raúl Rojas et al., Zuse created the first, high-level programming language, Plankalkül.
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Members of the 1945 ENIAC programming team of Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman have since been credited as the first professional computer programmers.
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The first company founded specifically to provide software products and services was the Computer Usage Company in 1955. Before that time, computers were programmed either by customers or the few commercial computer manufacturers of the time, such as Sperry Rand and IBM.
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The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities. Universities, governments, and businesses created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers; some were distributed between users of a particular machine for no charge, while others were sold on a commercial basis. Other firms, such as Computer Sciences Corporation , also started to grow. Computer manufacturers soon started bundling operating systems, system software and programming environments with their machines; the IBM 1620 came with the 1620 Symbolic Programming System and FORTRAN.
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The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the personal computer in the mid-1970s, which brought computing to the average office worker. In the following years, the PC also helped create a constantly growing market for games, applications and utility software. This resulted in increased demand for software developers for that period of time.
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Computer programmers write, test, debug, and maintain the detailed instructions, called computer programs, that computers must follow to perform their functions. Programmers also conceive, design, and test logical structures for solving problems by computer. Many technical innovations in programming — advanced computing technologies and sophisticated new languages and programming tools — have redefined the role of a programmer and elevated much of the programming work done today. Job titles and descriptions may vary, depending on the organization.
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Programmers work in many settings, including corporate information technology departments, big software companies, small service firms and government entities of all sizes. Many professional programmers also work for consulting companies at client sites as contractors. Licensing is not typically required to work as a programmer, although professional certifications are commonly held by programmers. Programming is considered a profession.
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Programmers' work varies widely depending on the type of business for which they are writing programs. For example, the instructions involved in updating financial records are very different from those required to duplicate conditions on an aircraft for pilots training in a flight simulator. Simple programs can be written in a few hours. More complex ones may require more than a year of work, while others are never considered 'complete' but rather are continuously improved as long as they stay in use. In most cases, several programmers work together as a team under a senior programmer's supervision.
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Programming editors, also known as source code editors, are text editors that are specifically designed for programmers or developers to write the source code of an application or a program. Most of these editors include features useful for programmers, which may include color syntax highlighting, auto indentation, auto-complete, bracket matching, syntax check, and allows plug-ins. These features aid the users during coding, debugging and testing.
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According to BBC News, 17% of computer science students could not find work in their field six months after graduation in 2009 which was the highest rate of the university subjects surveyed while 0% of medical students were unemployed in the same survey.
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After the crash of the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession , many U.S. programmers were left without work or with lower wages. In addition, enrollment in computer-related degrees and other STEM degrees in the US has been dropping for years, especially for women, which, according to Beaubouef and Mason, could be attributed to a lack of general interest in science and mathematics and also out of an apparent fear that programming will be subject to the same pressures as manufacturing and agriculture careers. For programmers, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook originally predicted a growth for programmers of 12 percent from 2010 to 2020 and thereafter a decline of -7 percent from 2016 to 2026, a further decline of -9 percent from 2019 to 2029, a decline of -10 percent from 2021 to 2031. and then a decline of -11 percent from 2022 to 2032. Since computer programming can be done from anywhere in the world, companies sometimes hire programmers in countries where wages are lower. However, for software developers BLS projects for 2019 to 2029 a 22% increase in employment, from 1,469,200 to 1,785,200 jobs with a median base salary of $110,000 per year. This prediction is lower than the earlier 2010 to 2020 predicted increase of 30% for software developers. Though the distinction is somewhat ambiguous, software developers engage in a wider array of aspects of application development and are generally higher skilled than programmers, making outsourcing less of a risk. Another reason for the decline for programmers is their skills are being merged with other professions, such as developers, as employers increase the requirements for a position over time. Then there is the additional concern that recent advances in artificial intelligence might impact the demand for future generations of Software professions.
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For such cases, it is a more accurate measure than measuring instructions per second.
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Floating-point arithmetic is needed for very large or very small real numbers, or computations that require a large dynamic range. Floating-point representation is similar to scientific notation, except everything is carried out in base two, rather than base ten. The encoding scheme stores the sign, the exponent and the significand . While several similar formats are in use, the most common is ANSI/IEEE Std. 754-1985. This standard defines the format for 32-bit numbers called single precision, as well as 64-bit numbers called double precision and longer numbers called extended precision . Floating-point representations can support a much wider range of values than fixed-point, with the ability to represent very small numbers and very large numbers.
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The exponentiation inherent in floating-point computation assures a much larger dynamic range – the largest and smallest numbers that can be represented – which is especially important when processing data sets where some of the data may have extremely large range of numerical values or where the range may be unpredictable. As such, floating-point processors are ideally suited for computationally intensive applications.
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FLOPS and MIPS are units of measure for the numerical computing performance of a computer. Floating-point operations are typically used in fields such as scientific computational research, as well as in machine learning. However, before the late 1980s floating-point hardware was typically an optional feature, and computers that had it were said to be "scientific computers", or to have "scientific computation" capability. Thus the unit MIPS was useful to measure integer performance of any computer, including those without such a capability, and to account for architecture differences, similar MOPS was used as early as 1970 as well. Note that besides integer arithmetics, examples of integer operation include data movement or value testing . That's why MIPS as a performance benchmark is adequate when a computer is used in database queries, word processing, spreadsheets, or to run multiple virtual operating systems. In 1974 David Kuck coined the terms flops and megaflops for the description of supercomputer performance of the day by the number of floating-point calculations they performed per second. This was much better than using the prevalent MIPS to compare computers as this statistic usually had little bearing on the arithmetic capability of the machine on scientific tasks.
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FLOPS on an HPC-system can be calculated using this equation:
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This can be simplified to the most common case: a computer that has exactly 1 CPU:
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FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, for example, the TOP500 supercomputer list ranks computers by 64 bit operations per second, abbreviated to FP64. Similar measures are available for 32-bit and 16-bit operations.
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In June 1997, Intel's ASCI Red was the world's first computer to achieve one teraFLOPS and beyond. Sandia director Bill Camp said that ASCI Red had the best reliability of any supercomputer ever built, and "was supercomputing's high-water mark in longevity, price, and performance".
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NEC's SX-9 supercomputer was the world's first vector processor to exceed 100 gigaFLOPS per single core.
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In June 2006, a new computer was announced by Japanese research institute RIKEN, the MDGRAPE-3. The computer's performance tops out at one petaFLOPS, almost two times faster than the Blue Gene/L, but MDGRAPE-3 is not a general purpose computer, which is why it does not appear in the Top500.org list. It has special-purpose pipelines for simulating molecular dynamics.
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By 2007, Intel Corporation unveiled the experimental multi-core POLARIS chip, which achieves 1 teraFLOPS at 3.13 GHz. The 80-core chip can raise this result to 2 teraFLOPS at 6.26 GHz, although the thermal dissipation at this frequency exceeds 190 watts.
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In June 2007, Top500.org reported the fastest computer in the world to be the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, measuring a peak of 596 teraFLOPS. The Cray XT4 hit second place with 101.7 teraFLOPS.
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On June 26, 2007, IBM announced the second generation of its top supercomputer, dubbed Blue Gene/P and designed to continuously operate at speeds exceeding one petaFLOPS, faster than the Blue Gene/L. When configured to do so, it can reach speeds in excess of three petaFLOPS.
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On October 25, 2007, NEC Corporation of Japan issued a press release announcing its SX series model SX-9, claiming it to be the world's fastest vector supercomputer. The SX-9 features the first CPU capable of a peak vector performance of 102.4 gigaFLOPS per single core.
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On February 4, 2008, the NSF and the University of Texas at Austin opened full scale research runs on an AMD, Sun supercomputer named Ranger,
the most powerful supercomputing system in the world for open science research, which operates at sustained speed of 0.5 petaFLOPS.
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On May 25, 2008, an American supercomputer built by IBM, named 'Roadrunner', reached the computing milestone of one petaFLOPS. It headed the June 2008 and November 2008 TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers . The computer is located at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The computer's name refers to the New Mexico state bird, the greater roadrunner .
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In June 2008, AMD released ATI Radeon HD 4800 series, which are reported to be the first GPUs to achieve one teraFLOPS. On August 12, 2008, AMD released the ATI Radeon HD 4870X2 graphics card with two Radeon R770 GPUs totaling 2.4 teraFLOPS.
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In November 2008, an upgrade to the Cray Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory raised the system's computing power to a peak 1.64 petaFLOPS, making Jaguar the world's first petaFLOPS system dedicated to open research. In early 2009 the supercomputer was named after a mythical creature, Kraken. Kraken was declared the world's fastest university-managed supercomputer and sixth fastest overall in the 2009 TOP500 list. In 2010 Kraken was upgraded and can operate faster and is more powerful.
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In 2009, the Cray Jaguar performed at 1.75 petaFLOPS, beating the IBM Roadrunner for the number one spot on the TOP500 list.
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In October 2010, China unveiled the Tianhe-1, a supercomputer that operates at a peak computing rate of 2.5 petaFLOPS.
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As of 2010 the fastest PC processor reached 109 gigaFLOPS in double precision calculations. GPUs are considerably more powerful. For example, Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPU computing processors perform around 515 gigaFLOPS in double precision calculations, and the AMD FireStream 9270 peaks at 240 gigaFLOPS.
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In November 2011, it was announced that Japan had achieved 10.51 petaFLOPS with its K computer. It has 88,128 SPARC64 VIIIfx processors in 864 racks, with theoretical performance of 11.28 petaFLOPS. It is named after the Japanese word "kei", which stands for 10 quadrillion, corresponding to the target speed of 10 petaFLOPS.
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On November 15, 2011, Intel demonstrated a single x86-based processor, code-named "Knights Corner", sustaining more than a teraFLOPS on a wide range of DGEMM operations. Intel emphasized during the demonstration that this was a sustained teraFLOPS , and that it was the first general purpose processor to ever cross a teraFLOPS.
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On June 18, 2012, IBM's Sequoia supercomputer system, based at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , reached 16 petaFLOPS, setting the world record and claiming first place in the latest TOP500 list.
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On November 12, 2012, the TOP500 list certified Titan as the world's fastest supercomputer per the LINPACK benchmark, at 17.59 petaFLOPS. It was developed by Cray Inc. at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and combines AMD Opteron processors with "Kepler" NVIDIA Tesla graphics processing unit technologies.
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On June 10, 2013, China's Tianhe-2 was ranked the world's fastest with 33.86 petaFLOPS.
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On June 20, 2016, China's Sunway TaihuLight was ranked the world's fastest with 93 petaFLOPS on the LINPACK benchmark . The system, which is almost exclusively based on technology developed in China, is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, and represents more performance than the next five most powerful systems on the TOP500 list combined.
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In June 2019, Summit, an IBM-built supercomputer now running at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory , captured the number one spot with a performance of 148.6 petaFLOPS on High Performance Linpack , the benchmark used to rank the TOP500 list. Summit has 4,356 nodes, each one equipped with two 22-core Power9 CPUs, and six NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.
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Distributed computing uses the Internet to link personal computers to achieve more FLOPS:
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2,555
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Total system GFLOPS = 89,794 / TFLOPS= 89.2794
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2,556
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Total system cost incl. realistic but low cost parts; matched with other example = $2839
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2,557
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US$/GFLOP = $0.0314
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A web browser is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. In 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people have used a browser. The most-used browser is Google Chrome, with a 64% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 19%.
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A web browser is not the same thing as a search engine, though the two are often confused. A search engine is a website that provides links to other websites. However, to connect to a website's server and display its web pages, a user must have a web browser installed. In some technical contexts, browsers are referred to as user agents.
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The purpose of a web browser is to fetch content from the Web or local storage and display it on the user's device. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Locator , such as https://en.wikipedia.org/, into the browser. Virtually all URLs on the Web start with either http: or https: which means they are retrieved with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol . For secure mode , the connection between the browser and web server is encrypted, providing a secure and private data transfer.
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Web pages usually contain hyperlinks to other pages and resources. Each link contains a URL, and when it is clicked or tapped, the browser navigates to the new resource. Most browsers use an internal cache of web page resources to improve loading times for subsequent visits to the same page. The cache can store many items, such as large images, so they do not need to be downloaded from the server again. Cached items are usually only stored for as long as the web server stipulates in its HTTP response messages.
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During the course of browsing, cookies received from various websites are stored by the browser. Some of them contain login credentials or site preferences. However, others are used for tracking user behavior over long periods of time, so browsers typically provide a section in the menu for deleting cookies. Finer-grained management of cookies usually requires a browser extension.
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The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser, which displayed web pages on dumb terminals. The Mosaic web browser was released in April 1993, and was later credited as the first web browser to find mainstream popularity. Its innovative graphical user interface made the World Wide Web easy to navigate and thus more accessible to the average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate. The lead developers of Mosaic then founded the Netscape corporation, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994. Navigator quickly became the most popular browser.
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Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Within a few years, Microsoft gained a dominant position in the browser market for two reasons: it bundled Internet Explorer with its popular Windows operating system and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. The market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95% in the early 2000s. In 1998, Netscape launched what would become the Mozilla Foundation to create a new browser using the open-source software model. This work evolved into the Firefox browser, first released by Mozilla in 2004. Firefox's market share peaked at 32% in 2010. Apple released its Safari browser in 2003; it remains the dominant browser on Apple devices, though it did not become popular elsewhere.
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Google debuted its Chrome browser in 2008, which steadily took market share from Internet Explorer and became the most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since. By 2015, Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge for the Windows 10 release.
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Since the early 2000s, browsers have greatly expanded their HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and multimedia capabilities. One reason has been to enable more sophisticated websites, such as web apps. Another factor is the significant increase of broadband connectivity in many parts of the world, enabling people to access data-intensive content, such as streaming HD video on YouTube, that was not possible during the era of dial-up modems.
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Google Chrome has been the dominant browser since the mid-2010s and currently has a 64% global market share on all devices. The vast majority of its source code comes from Google's open-source Chromium project; this code is also the basis for many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge, currently in third place with about a 5% share, and Opera and Samsung Internet in fifth and sixth place with over 2% each.
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The other two browsers in the top four are made from different codebases. Safari, based on Apple's WebKit code, is dominant on Apple devices, resulting in a 19% global share. Firefox, with about a 3% share, is based on Mozilla's code. Both of these codebases are open-source, so a number of small niche browsers are also made from them.
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The most popular browsers share many features in common. They automatically log users' browsing history, unless the users turn off their browsing history or use the non-logging private mode. They also allow users to set bookmarks, customize the browser with extensions, and can manage user passwords. Some provide a sync service and web accessibility features.
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Common user interface features:
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While mobile browsers have similar UI features as desktop versions, the limitations of touch screens require mobile UIs to be simpler. The difference is significant for users accustomed to keyboard shortcuts. The most popular desktop browsers also have sophisticated web development tools.
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Web browsers are popular targets for hackers, who exploit security holes to steal information, destroy files, and other malicious activities. Browser vendors regularly patch these security holes, so users are strongly encouraged to keep their browser software updated. Other protection measures are antivirus software and being aware of scams.
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Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word processors are word processor programs running on general purpose computers.
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The functions of a word processor program fall somewhere between those of a simple text editor and a fully functioned desktop publishing program. However, the distinctions between these three have changed over time and were unclear after 2010.
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Word processors developed from mechanical machines, later merging with computer technology. The history of word processing is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and then to the refinement of the technology to make it available to corporations and Individuals.
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The term word processing appeared in American offices in the early 1970s centered on the idea of streamlining the work to typists, but the meaning soon shifted toward the automation of the whole editing cycle.
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At first, the designers of word processing systems combined existing technologies with emerging ones to develop stand-alone equipment, creating a new business distinct from the emerging world of the personal computer. The concept of word processing arose from the more general data processing, which since the 1950s had been the application of computers to business administration.
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Through history, there have been three types of word processors: mechanical, electronic and software.
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The first word processing device was patented in 1714 by Henry Mill for a machine that was capable of "writing so clearly and accurately you could not distinguish it from a printing press". More than a century later, another patent appeared in the name of William Austin Burt for the typographer. In the late 19th century, Christopher Latham Sholes created the first recognizable typewriter, which was described as a "literary piano".
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The only "word processing" these mechanical systems could perform was to change where letters appeared on the page, to fill in spaces that were previously left on the page, or to skip over lines. It was not until decades later that the introduction of electricity and electronics into typewriters began to help the writer with the mechanical part. The term “word processing” itself was possibly created in the 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, a German IBM typewriter sales executive, or by an American electro-mechanical typewriter executive, George M. Ryan, who obtained a trademark registration in the USPTO for the phrase. However, it did not make its appearance in 1960s office management or computing literature , though many of the ideas, products, and technologies to which it would later be applied were already well known. Nonetheless, by 1971, the term was recognized by the New York Times as a business "buzz word". Word processing paralleled the more general "data processing", or the application of computers to business administration.
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Thus, by 1972, the discussion of word processing was common in publications devoted to business office management and technology; by the mid-1970s, the term would have been familiar to any office manager who consulted business periodicals.
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By the late 1960s, IBM had developed the IBM MT/ST . It was a model of the IBM Selectric typewriter from earlier in 1961, but it came built into its own desk, integrated with magnetic tape recording and playback facilities along with controls and a bank of electrical relays. The MT/ST automated word wrap, but it had no screen. This device allowed a user to rewrite text that had been written on another tape, and it also allowed limited collaboration in the sense that a user could send the tape to another person to let them edit the document or make a copy. It was a revolution for the word processing industry. In 1969, the tapes were replaced by magnetic cards. These memory cards were inserted into an extra device that accompanied the MT/ST, able to read and record users' work.
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Throughout the 1960s and 70s, word processing began to slowly shift from glorified typewriters augmented with electronic features to become fully computer-based with the development of several innovations. Just before the arrival of the personal computer , IBM developed the floppy disk. In the 1970s, the first proper word-processing systems appeared, which allowed display and editing of documents on CRT screens.
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During this era, these early stand-alone word processing systems were designed, built, and marketed by several pioneering companies. Linolex Systems was founded in 1970 by James Lincoln and Robert Oleksiak. Linolex based its technology on microprocessors, floppy drives and software. It was a computer-based system for application in the word processing businesses and it sold systems through its own sales force. With a base of installed systems in over 500 sites, Linolex Systems sold 3 million units in 1975 — a year before the Apple computer was released.
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At that time, the Lexitron Corporation also produced a series of dedicated word-processing microcomputers. Lexitron was the first to use a full-sized video display screen in its models by 1978. Lexitron also used 51⁄4 inch floppy diskettes, which became the standard in the personal computer field. The program disk was inserted in one drive, and the system booted up. The data diskette was then put in the second drive. The operating system and the word processing program were combined in one file.
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Another of the early word processing adopters was Vydec, which created in 1973 the first modern text processor, the "Vydec Word Processing System". It had built-in multiple functions like the ability to share content by diskette and print it. The Vydec Word Processing System sold for $12,000 at the time, .
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The Redactron Corporation designed and manufactured editing systems, including correcting/editing typewriters, cassette and card units, and eventually a word processor called the Data Secretary. The Burroughs Corporation acquired Redactron in 1976.
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A CRT-based system by Wang Laboratories became one of the most popular systems of the 1970s and early 1980s. The Wang system displayed text on a CRT screen, and incorporated virtually every fundamental characteristic of word processors as they are known today. While early computerized word processor system were often expensive and hard to use , the Wang system was a true office machine, affordable to organizations such as medium-sized law firms, and easily mastered and operated by secretarial staff.
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The phrase "word processor" rapidly came to refer to CRT-based machines similar to Wang's. Numerous machines of this kind emerged, typically marketed by traditional office-equipment companies such as IBM, Lanier , CPT, and NBI. All were specialized, dedicated, proprietary systems, with prices in the $10,000 range. Cheap general-purpose personal computers were still the domain of hobbyists.
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In Japan, even though typewriters with Japanese writing system had widely been used for businesses and governments, they were limited to specialists and required special skills due to the wide variety of letters, until computer-based devices came onto the market. In 1977, Sharp showcased a prototype of a computer-based word processing dedicated device with Japanese writing system in Business Show in Tokyo.
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Toshiba released the first Japanese word processor JW-10 in February 1979. The price was 6,300,000 JPY, equivalent to US$45,000. This is selected as one of the milestones of IEEE.
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The Japanese writing system uses a large number of kanji which require 2 bytes to store, so having one key per each symbol is infeasible. Japanese word processing became possible with the development of the Japanese input method -- now widely used in personal computers. Oki launched OKI WORD EDITOR-200 in March 1979 with this kana-based keyboard input system. In 1980 several electronics and office equipment brands including entered this rapidly growing market with more compact and affordable devices. For instance, NEC introduced the NWP-20 , and Fujitsu launched the Fujitsu OASYS . While the average unit price in 1980 was 2,000,000 JPY , it was dropped to 164,000 JPY in 1985. Even after personal computers became widely available, Japanese word processors remained popular as they tended to be more portable , and become commonplace for business and academics, even for private individuals in the second half of the 1980s. The phrase "word processor" has been abbreviated as "Wa-pro" or "wapuro" in Japanese.
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The final step in word processing came with the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s and 1980s and with the subsequent creation of word processing software. Word processing software that would create much more complex and capable output was developed and prices began to fall, making them more accessible to the public. By the late 1970s, computerized word processors were still primarily used by employees composing documents for large and midsized businesses . Within a few years, the falling prices of PCs made word processing available for the first time to all writers in the convenience of their homes.
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The first word processing program for personal computers was Electric Pencil, from Michael Shrayer Software, which went on sale in December 1976. In 1978 WordStar appeared and because of its many new features soon dominated the market. WordStar was written for the early CP/M operating system, ported to CP/M-86, then to MS-DOS, and was the most popular word processing program until 1985 when WordPerfect sales first exceeded WordStar sales.
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Early word processing software was not as intuitive as word processor devices. Most early word processing software required users to memorize semi-mnemonic key combinations rather than pressing keys such as "copy" or "bold". Moreover, CP/M lacked cursor keys; for example WordStar used the E-S-D-X-centered "diamond" for cursor navigation. A notable exception was the software Lexitype for MS-DOS that took inspiration from the Lexitron dedicated word processor's user interface and which mapped individual functions to particular keyboard function keys, and a set of stick-on "keycaps" describing the function were provided with the software. Lexitype was popular with large organizations that had previously used the Lexitron. Eventually, the price differences between dedicated word processors and general-purpose PCs, and the value added to the latter by software such as “killer app” spreadsheet applications, e.g. VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3, were so compelling that personal computers and word processing software became serious competition for the dedicated machines and soon dominated the market.
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In the late 1980s, innovations such as the advent of laser printers, a "typographic" approach to word processing , using bitmap displays with multiple fonts , and graphical user interfaces such as “copy and paste” . These were popularized by MacWrite on the Apple Macintosh in 1983, and Microsoft Word on the IBM PC in 1984. These were probably the first true WYSIWYG word processors to become known to many people.
Of particular interest also is the standardization of TrueType fonts used in both Macintosh and Windows PCs. While the publishers of the operating systems provide TrueType typefaces, they are largely gathered from traditional typefaces converted by smaller font publishing houses to replicate standard fonts. Demand for new and interesting fonts, which can be found free of copyright restrictions, or commissioned from font designers, developed.
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The growing popularity of the Windows operating system in the 1990s later took Microsoft Word along with it. Originally called "Microsoft Multi-Tool Word", this program quickly became a synonym for “word processor”.
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Early in the 21st century, Google Docs popularized the transition to online or offline web browser based word processing, this was enabled by the widespread adoption of suitable internet connectivity in businesses and domestic households and later the popularity of smartphones. Google Docs enabled word processing from within any vendor's web browser, which could run on any vendor's operating system on any physical device type including tablets and smartphones, although offline editing is limited to a few Chromium based web browsers. Google Docs also enabled the significant growth of use of information technology such as remote access to files and collaborative real-time editing, both becoming simple to do with little or no need for costly software and specialist IT support.
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The term is often used in contrast to declarative programming, which focuses on what the program should accomplish without specifying all the details of how the program should achieve the result.
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Procedural programming is a type of imperative programming in which the program is built from one or more procedures . The terms are often used as synonyms, but the use of procedures has a dramatic effect on how imperative programs appear and how they are constructed. Heavy procedural programming, in which state changes are localized to procedures or restricted to explicit arguments and returns from procedures, is a form of structured programming. Since the 1960s, structured programming and modular programming in general have been promoted as techniques to improve the maintainability and overall quality of imperative programs. The concepts behind object-oriented programming attempt to extend this approach.
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