Week 1 Assignments - Joey Struwe

1. Are Internet and World Wide Web synonymous? If different, how? Please differentiate the two in terms of their origin and functions.
   
   The Internet and World Wide Web are terms that are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation.  However, they are not synonymous terms.  The Internet is a massive collection of computers that can communicate with each other as long as they are connected to the internet.  The World Wide Web  is a way to access information that is available via the Internet.  The Web uses protocols such at HTTP and browsers such as Internet Explorer to interact and present the information to the end user.  The Web is one of several ways that information can be presented over the Internet.  Email, newsgroups and FTP are other examples of ways that information can be shared over the Internet.

   The Internet grew out of projects designed to allow researchers and the military to communicate with each other using email type applications as their primary method of communication.  The World Wide Web grew out of a necessity to give computers and users a common means of sharing information.

    

2. HTML is the predominant markup language used on the World Wide Web.  It uses tags to describe the structure of text based documents (mainly) by assigning font and other text attributes and page properties.  XML allows users to define their own tags to define shared data not just share information across the internet.  XHTML is basically XML that a browser can interpret as HTML
    
3. Compiled programming languages include C, C++, Visual Basic, Pascal, COBOL and FORTRAN.  Scripting languages include JavaScript, ASP, JSP and Perl.
   
4. Programming and scripting languages are designed to compliment each other.  Scripting languages have become more and more common over the past decade or so without people even realizing it.  Scripting languages help to connect components of programs and, in a sense are faster than programming languages because they are more flexible in terms of the information they can handle.  They can interpret code and data on the go. 
   
   Components are easier to connect because there are no restrictions on how things can be used.  Components designed for one thing in one application can be used for something totally different in another.  Another difference between scripting languages and system programming languages is that scripting languages are usually interpreted whereas system programming languages are usually compiled. THis makes them faster than compiled languages. Interpreters also make applications more flexible by allowing users to program the applications at run-time.
   
   Scripting languages are less efficient than system programming languages, in part because they often use strings in situations where a system programming language would use a binary value that fits in a single machine word.
   
   
   

   	compiled languages	scripting languages
   samples	C/C++, ...	JavaScript, ...
   ease of authoring
   ease of deployment
   execution speed
   security