Glossary
Computer Science Professor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential computer science professor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key computer science professor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in computer science professor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Academic integrity
- Honesty in coursework.
- Algorithm
- Step-by-step procedure.
- Autograder
- Automatic code grading.
- Big O
- Measure of algorithm efficiency.
- Capstone
- Final project course.
- Compiler
- Translates code.
- Conference paper
- Peer-reviewed CS publication.
- Data structure
- Way to organize data.
- Lab section
- Hands-on class time.
- Machine learning
- Systems that learn from data.
- NSF
- National Science Foundation.
- Pseudocode
- Plain-language code outline.
- Recursion
- A function calling itself.
- TA
- Teaching assistant.
- Tenure
- Permanent status.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Computer Science Professor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Computer Science Professor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.