My (just turning an official teen) boy is a programming junkie. He learns on his own from Youtube.
JAVA, Scripting, C - anything you name and keeps doing a few oddball programs whenever he has time.
So, I am used to opening my computer to get voice greetings like "Welcome Mr. .......... Please enjoy your work !"
Or sometimes, a strange looking icon at the middle of the opening screen that says - "Click and all the applications you really use will be open with just that one click".
Many more like that. He never bothers to ask me questions on programming. With plenty of resources on-line, he is pretty much on his own.
However, today he asked me one question. "Why some languages refer the "Enter" key as the "Return" key ?"
At first I did not even understand the question. Then he explained me - Enter means, coming in to something / some place. Return mean going back. Quite opposite English terms used for the same key ?
20 yrs of computer history was replaying in front of me to answer that question.
Return - relatively older term from the line feed printer and punch card days, which came from Return Carriage ! Used to move the cursor back to column ZERO.
Enter - Newer term. In newer era of computing, Input text boxes ask for strings to be entered. In most new apps Enter not necessarily does a return carriage. It can do a search or some other fucntion.
Happy 13th Birthday on this Christmas my boy !! Stay inquisitive ...
JAVA, Scripting, C - anything you name and keeps doing a few oddball programs whenever he has time.
So, I am used to opening my computer to get voice greetings like "Welcome Mr. .......... Please enjoy your work !"
Or sometimes, a strange looking icon at the middle of the opening screen that says - "Click and all the applications you really use will be open with just that one click".
Many more like that. He never bothers to ask me questions on programming. With plenty of resources on-line, he is pretty much on his own.
However, today he asked me one question. "Why some languages refer the "Enter" key as the "Return" key ?"
At first I did not even understand the question. Then he explained me - Enter means, coming in to something / some place. Return mean going back. Quite opposite English terms used for the same key ?
20 yrs of computer history was replaying in front of me to answer that question.
Return - relatively older term from the line feed printer and punch card days, which came from Return Carriage ! Used to move the cursor back to column ZERO.
Enter - Newer term. In newer era of computing, Input text boxes ask for strings to be entered. In most new apps Enter not necessarily does a return carriage. It can do a search or some other fucntion.
Happy 13th Birthday on this Christmas my boy !! Stay inquisitive ...
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