Program Design Grade

This is not a course in C++ programming. It is Computer Science II for Majors. As such, this course will continue to emphasize techniques for good program design.

You will never receive explicit instructions in a project specification about how to design the program. For example, I will never say there should be some minimum number of constants or some specific number of functions, since individual programmers will naturally come up with different designs for the same project. However, there are design techniques that every good programmer uses. You learned many of these technqiues in CMSC 201. They include

Top-down design
Writing general purpose functions
Using named constants

I expect you to use these techniques and others and not just write something that runs. Design will always account for 10% of your project grade. Program designs may not be submitted late.

Your design will always be due before your program. Your program will be checked to be sure that it follows the design that you submitted. It may differ from the design in only minor ways. For example, you may have decided to break a function into two functions once you began developing your code. Or you may have added a parameter to a function's interface.

Design is one of the most important aspects of programming.

Last Modified: Friday, 25-Jan-2002 16:41:47 EST