ITPEC IP April 2025 Question 5
Which of the following is a term for a list of instructions to a computer that are written in a human-readable programming language?
Explanation
Source code — the program as a person writes and reads it, in a programming language.
A programmer writes a program's instructions in a language such as C, Java or Python; that text is the source code. The CPU cannot run it directly, so a compiler translates it into machine code (an object or executable program), or an interpreter executes it statement by statement.
Answer (b)
Why not others:
- •(a) PIN code — a personal identification number, a secret number used to authenticate a user, as at an ATM
- •(c) Binary code — data or instructions written as 0s and 1s, such as the machine code a CPU executes; not human-readable
- •(d) Character code — the number assigned to each character so that a computer can store text, as in ASCII or Unicode
Key rule: Source code is written for people; a compiler or interpreter turns it into machine code, the binary instructions the CPU actually executes.
Algorithm and Programming · AI-written, may contain errors
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