What is Programming?

Specifying a detailed set of instructions telling a computer how to perform some task.

Five steps in the design process:

Understand the problem

• What is this program supposed to do?
• What kind of information is it given? (What is the input?)
• What kind of results is it to produce? (What is the output?)
• What formulas or techniques will be needed?

Do a small example by hand

Working out an example by hand helps to further understand the problem, and also provides some test results for later. Doing this example can also help develop the algorithm in the next step.

Write an algorithm for solving the problem

After working out an example by hand, you can write down a "recipe" for how the problem will be solved. This is a step by step list of what needs to be done.

Translate the algorithm into a programming language (like C)

Once you learn the C statments available with their proper "grammar", this should become an "easy" step.

Test the program

Run the program with your test data. Does it work? Does it work with other data? Later we'll try to "break" the program to find cases where it might not work.

Methods of approach:

Top Down

In the top-down approach, we start with the description of the problem. We break that up into "modules", each of which do a part of the problem, and repeat the whole process on each one of those modules.

Bottom Up

In the bottom-up approach we start with a simplified version of the problem; get it working; than add new features and capabilities until it solves the entire problem completely.

Reality

In reality, we approach problems a little bit both ways - some top-down, some bottom up.