Terminology of

Computing
Environments
Prof. Pai H. Chou
National Tsing Hua University

1
 Terms
• Terminal
• Shell, Bash
• Text editor, Vim
• Python interpreter
• Terminal Emulator
• PC, Local shell, local software
• IDLE
• Jupyter Notebook

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 Terminal
• A keyboard + a text display
• Physically connected to a computer (in
the computer room)

Computer Terminal
3
Operating System (OS)
• The software that manages a computer's
resources
• computing, input/output, storage,
• e.g.: Unix (macOS, Linux), Windows

OS

Computer Terminal
4
 Shell
• A command interpreter program
• Unix-like shells: sh, csh, bash, ksh, ...
• Windows shells: DOS, PowerShell, ...
• Graphical shells: Windows, iOS, macOS, Android

shell

OS

Computer Terminal
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 What can a shell do?
• Interpret commands
• Launch programs
• copy/rename files, list files
• run text editor, file transfer, ...
• run Python interpreter, run another shell, ...
• Suspend, stop (kill) running programs

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 Bash
• A Unix-like shell
• "Bourne-Again Shell"
• Open-source, most popular, runs on most OS's
$ ls
$ vim f.py
bash $ python3 f.py

OS

Computer Terminal
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 vim
• "Vi-improved"
• Vi = "Visual" text editor, on most Unix systems
• can edit, save plain text files (e.g., source in
Python)
vim print("hello")
~
~
bash ~
"hello.py"

OS

Computer Terminal
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 Python
• A Python-language interpreter
• Interactive mode => Python shell

python3 >>> print("hello")

bash $ python3

OS

Computer Terminal
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 Terminal Emulator
• An application program that emulates a
terminal
Terminal
• usually runs on a personal computer
emulator
python3

bash

OS

Computer Terminal
10
Personal Computer (PC)
• A computer that runs its own OS
• A terminal emulator can connect to a Terminal
remote bash to run python remotely emulator
vim python3

bash
graphical shell
OS
OS for PC (Windows,
macOS, Linux)
Computer PC Software
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 Local shell (on PC)
• PC can run its own bash locally

Terminal
emulator
vim python3

bash bash

OS graphical shell
OS (Windows, macOS, Linux)

Computer PC Software
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 1. Local text-based software
installation
• Python3, vim, etc have been ported to PC
Terminal
emulator

vim python3 vim python3

bash bash

OS graphical shell
OS (Windows, macOS, Linux)

Computer PC Software
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 2. IDLE
Terminal
• Graphical user interface (GUI) IDLE
emulator
for Python
• contains built-in editor
• provides Python shell python3 vim

bash
graphical shell
OS (Windows, macOS, Linux)

PC Software
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 3. Jupyter Notebook
Terminal
• Browser as web browser IDLE
emulator
graphic terminal bash vim
• runs as a local web
server python3 vim
• bash terminal, Jupyter Notebook
text editors, bash, (server) bash
file browser, graphical shell
OS (Windows, macOS, Linux)

PC Software
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What should you install?
• #1 (Local text-based) for CS majors
• may have learning curve, but worth it
• #2 (IDLE) for Non-CS majors
• friendlier, but no access to bash CLI
• ok for just learning Python only
• #3 (Jupyter) for both
• Superset of #1, also brings in latest Python
• You may need #1 to install Juypter (macOS, Linux)

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