TL;DR

Every programming language must have the following data structures: strings, records, arrays, and lists. We explain what reasoning is behind that fact. The post is aligned with the Black Box Software Testing Foundations course (BBST) designed by Rebecca Fiedler, Cem Kaner, and James Bach.

We can  group primitive data types Integers, float point numbers, characters, and bits into meaningful ways:

• strings
• records
• arrays
• lists

We have strings that are collections of characters because we use words as mnemonics for stuff that we found in this beautiful world.

Some stuff like to get together, such as the address where we live, so we come up with records, a collection of basic types in a meaningful way.

We noticed that some numbers or words tend to cluster together. So we created arrays and lists.

These basic data structures must be present in every programming language. Otherwise, you will not be able to model things from our environment into a programming language.