The word 'document' is a countable noun which means paper or some report. It is also as a verb ('Documentation' is not).
"The scientists documented the lab experiments to prove the herb's medicinal properties."
The word 'documentation' is an uncountable noun and is a collection of or body of material of any subject/topic.
"This is just one report, where is the documentation for the whole project?"
The simplest way to think about these two terms is perhaps,
- to think of a user account as the user himself or herself, and
- to think of his or her profile as information about that user.
Sometimes the two terms are somewhat overlapped.
From Wikipedia,
A user is a person who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username (also user name). Other terms for username include login name, screen name (also screenname), nickname (also nick), or handle, ...
A user profile is a visual display of personal data associated with a specific user, or a customized desktop environment. A profile refers therefore to the explicit digital representation of a person's identity. A user profile can also be considered as the computer representation of a user model. A profile can be used to store the description of the characteristics of person. This information can be exploited by systems taking into account the persons' characteristics and preferences.
From Microsoft,
(this is specific to Windows operating system, but the concept is similar to user account and user profile in web programming)
A user account is a collection of information that tells Windows which files and folders you can access, what changes you can make to the computer, and your personal preferences, such as your desktop background or screen saver. User accounts let you share a computer with several people, while having your own files and settings. Each person accesses his or her user account with a user name and password.
Your user profile is a collection of settings that make the computer look and work the way you want it to. It contains your settings for desktop backgrounds, screen savers, pointer preferences, sound settings, and other features. User profiles ensure that your personal preferences are used whenever you log on to Windows.
A user profile is different from a user account, which you use to log on to Windows. Each user account has at least one user profile associated with it.
(emphasis added)
Best Answer
Let me share my intuition. (I'm not going to quote any definitions in dictionaries in this answer. Also keep in mind that I'm a non-native speaker.)
Here is probably one of the best ways to think of the subtle differences between cycle and loop.
Imagine a "circle".
You have a circle in your mind now, right? Okay, that is a "loop".
A loop is basically a circle, or a round path. If you have a string and you tie the two ends together, you get a "loop". One important property of a loop is that it has no beginning and it has no end.
What about "cycle"? If you drag your finger along a circle, you will complete one "cycle" when your finger is back at the point where you started your dragging.
See, "loop" is a thing, a path that its end is its beginning and its beginning is its end;
while "cycle" is rather activity-like, like when we go along such a path or make/complete a cycle.
And because we can informally say either "my code loops through this loop" or "my code cycles through this loop", the real uses of the two words are kind of blended together. (You may want to use something else, such as "iterate", in formal writing.) Unsurprisingly, the two are interchangeable in some contexts, though most of the time, you wouldn't really want to use one in the place of another.
In programming, you'd want to write a loop, not a cycle, in your code ('cause a loop is a thing, while a cycle is an activity.) How many loops your code will run a loop would depend on the conditions in your code. When it runs, you may call "each time your code completes a loop" either a "loop" or a "cycle"; and you may want to call "each time your code completes its execution" either a "run" or a "cycle".
For example, let's say you're developing a game, and you've got a function named
PrepareSkynet().Let's assume that you write a
forloop in yourPrepareSkynet()to make 42 terminators.You may say that your
PrepareSkynet()runs the "make a terminator"for-loop 42 times.You could also say that it does 42 "make a terminator"
for-loops.Or it loops the "make a terminator"
for-loop 42 times.You may as well say that your "make a terminator"
for-loop runs 42 times, or 42 cycles.See? It's rather flexible!
Hope you'll get the hang of it soon!