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Tips For Solving Programming Problems

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5 views1 page

Tips For Solving Programming Problems

Uploaded by

kamogelomalepe0
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Tips for Solving Programming Problems

1. Getting Started:
a. What are the goals of the problem?
b. What are the inputs?
c. What are the outputs?
d. What is their relationship?
e. Can you solve a small example by hand?
f. Is there a part of the problem you could write code for? (and worry about the rest later?)
g. Can you describe the algorithm in words (pseudocode)?
2. Compiling Code
a. What line is the syntax error on?
b. What does the text of the error mean?
c. Can you simplify your code to eliminate this problem and confirm its precise location?
3. Getting Code to Function
a. What evidence do you have that the code doesn’t work?
b. What test case doesn’t work and what incorrect behavior or output results?
c. Could you come up with a simpler example that demonstrates the error?
d. What lines of code might be producing the bug?
e. Why - what hypotheses do you have for what might be causing the problem?
f. How can you test these hypotheses? (e.g. writing new test cases, adding print statements,
using a debugger)
g. Could you walk through an example that doesn’t work: by hand? with a debugger?

Adapted from CSTeachingTips.org

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