How to design programs

howto.md

How to design your first programs

Design step 1) Define your goal

• state this in a sentence or two
• state this as a user-facing outcome

Design step 2) Define requirements

• constraints solution needs to abide by (budget, timelinem, space, memory, etc)
• capabilities of the program to meet need
• define that WHAT not the HOW

Design step 3) Define the tools, targets, and backup plan

• defining what the target architecture is
• determine the set of tools
• determining whether you wil write alone or part of a team
• defining testing/feedback/release strategy
• defining how to backup code

Design step 4) Bread hard problems down to easy problems

• top-down method: break the task into multiple subtasks, each of which is individually easier to solve
  • if still too difficult, further broken down
• bottom-up, look for ways to group items with similarities.
• Creates a task hierarchy
  • top-level becomes main()
    • subitems become functions

Design step 5) Figure out the sequence of events

• Figure out what needs to be done first

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Implementation Step 1) Outlining main function

• comments or pseudo code

Implementation Step 2) Implement each function

Implementation Step 3) Implement testing