Prg 420 - Programming Solutions

Programming Solutions

Marquita Sparks

PRG 420 – Week 5 – Daniel Dee

January 16, 2016

Once a program enters the development stage, it encounters a great deal of preliminary planning and trial and error.  It is difficult to easily foresee an error that will arise within a line of programming code, especially before compile time.  No coding session for a program is 100% foolproof; it is safe to say that a programmer will run into several problems before it reaches its final stages.  It is not enough to simply find a solution, but to find a feasible way to reach that particular solution that will work without compromising the integrity and flow of the entire program.  

In my opinion, there are three problems that a programmer may run into when planning and designing a solution for a programming problem.  

• The program was written far too quickly without regard to how loquacious and ambiguous a compiler can be.
• Trying to solve each and every problem on the first “go-around”, which can be overwhelming and leaves the program susceptible to more errors.
• Overall poor time-management, dedicating too much time to solving one larger issue while insufficient attention is paid to other smaller problems.

When dealing with compiler error messages, it is important to understand that a single error can often confuse a compiler and result in several (Allain, n.d.).  Start with the first error as this sometimes has the power to correct all of the subsequent errors.  A great way to eliminate errors popping up is to “compile-as-you-go”.  This breaks down one large problem into smaller more manageable problems.  This can help solve problems as they arise.  Read the problem completely and thoroughly, because if you do not understand the problem, you cannot solve it.  Try to solve the problem manually first and then augment the answer that you come up with while it is still very malleable.  Make good use of comments and pseudo-code.  Once you get a good handle of what your problem is and a feasible solution, you can replace or add to your comments and/or pseudo-code with real code.  This can serve as a way of rectifying your mistakes and showing exactly what that part of the code does in relation with the rest of the code.  From there you can optimize and finalize the newly input code (Sonmez, 2011).  Keep compiling and running the program to make sure everything runs smoothly and efficiently.