IBM, short for International Business Machines Corporation, is an American technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, that sells enterprise software, consulting services and computing infrastructure. It reported revenue of $67.5 billion for 2025 in its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company says its work centers on helping
An American technology company in Armonk, New York, that sells enterprise software, consulting and computing infrastructure.
Object-oriented programming, often shortened to OOP, is a programming paradigm that organizes software around objects, self-contained units that bundle together data, called properties or attributes, and the functions that operate on that data, called methods. Rather than writing a program as one long sequence of instructions acting on separate, loosely connected data, object-oriented programming models
A programming paradigm that organizes software around objects bundling data with the methods that act on it.
An operating system is the software that manages a computer’s hardware and provides the common services that every other program depends on to run. It sits between raw hardware, such as the processor, memory, storage, and network hardware, and the applications a person actually uses, handling the complicated, low-level work so that application developers do
The software that manages a computer's hardware and provides the shared services every other program relies on to run.
A personal computer is a computer designed for use by one person at a time, small and inexpensive enough to sit on a desk or in a home. The first models appeared in the early 1970s, and the IBM PC of 1981 turned the category into a standard business tool. History of the personal computer
A computer designed for one person at a time, small and cheap enough for a desk or home; early models appeared in the 1970s.
A programming language is a formal system of words, symbols, and rules that lets a person write instructions a computer can carry out. Unlike natural human languages, a programming language has a strict grammar, called syntax, and a precise meaning for every valid statement, called semantics, so that a program’s behavior is unambiguous and repeatable.
A formal system of symbols and rules used to write instructions that a computer can execute.
Quantum computing is a way of processing information that uses the rules of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, instead of the on-or-off bits of conventional computers. Its basic unit is the quantum bit, or qubit. Working quantum computers exist, but they remain small, error-prone and largely experimental, and they are expected to outperform
A way of computing that uses quantum effects such as superposition and entanglement in qubits, expected to be faster than ordinary computers on certain problems.
Recursion is a technique in computer science where a function solves a problem by calling itself on a smaller version of that same problem, continuing until it reaches a case simple enough to answer directly. That simplest case, called the base case, stops the chain of calls; without one, a recursive function would call itself
A technique in which a function solves a problem by calling itself on a smaller version of that problem until reaching a simple base case.
A relational database is a system for storing data in tables made up of rows and columns, where relationships between different pieces of data are expressed by matching values across tables rather than by nesting or linking records directly. A table of customers might list each customer’s unique ID, full name, mailing address, and phone
A system for storing data in linked tables of rows and columns, with relationships expressed through shared key values.
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that places a person inside a computer-generated, three-dimensional environment they can look around in and interact with. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) describes it as an immersive virtual world that may need a headset to replace the user’s view of their real surroundings completely with a simulated
A technology that immerses a person in a computer-generated, interactive three-dimensional environment, usually through a head-mounted display.