Test Your Nerd Knowledge: Sept. 20, 2022

Here’s a review of this week’s questions:

1. In tech-speak, what term is defined as a quick-repair job for a piece of programming designed to resolve functionality issues, improve security, or add new features?
2. This state will be home to Intel’s new manufacturing facility for producing advanced semiconductors. What state is it?
3. What is the name of the programming language introduced by Guido Van Rossum in 1991?

And here are the answers:

1. Answer: Patch. A patch is sometimes referred to as a bug fix since a reason for a patch is an imperfection that is discovered by its developers or users. Developers use debugging software to make patches that are temporary or permanent. These are not foolproof, as some patches negatively affect performance or have ripple effects that interrupt features. Patching software can be part of an application’s lifecycle, or timeline of anticipated changes, or it can be in response to news of a security vulnerability, performance issue, or other defect. 
2. Answer: Ohio. Despite hurdles in working with the U.S. Government, Intel plans to break ground on its new chip factory at the end of 2022, with production expected to start by 2025. The cost of the plant is expected to be over $20 billion, and the New Albany, Ohio facility is expected to employ over 3,000 people. Part of the excitement related to the project is that it will lessen U.S. reliance on semiconductors made overseas, which are subject to supply chain issues and possible future disruption due to hostilities between the countries where the chips are now being manufactured. By passing the CHIPS Act in August of 2022, the U.S. Government has cleared the way for federal funds to be allocated for the Intel Ohio project.
3. Answer: Python 0.9.0. Referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife for programmers,” The Python programming language lies behind an enormous variety of software applications, many of which affect our daily lives in ways both large and small. It is used in machine learning, banking, scientific computing, education, video games, math, physics, engineering, and for fast software prototyping by thousands of entities, including Autodesk, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, Alibaba, NASA, IBM, and hundreds of universities around the world. UC Berkeley and MIT are known to use it in their undergraduate programming courses. In 1989, Dutch engineer Guido Van Rossum had been looking for a “‘hobby’ programming project that would keep him occupied during the week around Christmas.” He named his creation Python in honor of the British comedy troupe “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” and once it was released to the world in 1991, it cemented its position as “computer programming for everybody,” with “code as understandable as the English language.”