Advanced Programming Languages

Program Development Cycle

Planning your program using a sequence of steps, referred to as the program development cycle, will enable you to use your time efficiently and will help you design error-free programs that produce the deisred output. Generally, the more time spent on carefully planning a program results in less time spent debugging and redesigning a program.

The following step-by-step process should be used in developing your programs.

• Analyze: Define the problem.
  Be sure that you understand what the program should do. Have a clear idea of what the relationship is between the input and the desired output.
• Design*: Plan the solution to the problem.
  Develop an algorithm for solving the problem. An algorithm is a lgical sequence of steps that solve the problem.
• Choose the interface: Select the objects.
  Determine how the input will be obtained and how the output will be displayed. Then create the appropriate command buttons to allow the user to control the program.
• Code: Translate the algorithm in the programming language.
  Write the program in Visual Basic and enter it.
• Test and debug: locate and fix any errors in the program.
• Document the program: Organize all the material that describes the program.
  Documentation is intended to allow another person, or the programmer at a later date, to understand the program. Internal documentation consists of statements in a program that are not executed, but point out the purposes of various parts of the program.

*Part of the design process will involve graphically depicting the logical steps to carry out your solution and show how the steps relate to each other. The process that you will use in this class is called flowcharting. You will use a program called Inspiration to develop your flowcharts. The graphic below illustrates the flowchart symbols that will be used and what they stand for.