Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, 2nd Edition

6. Writing a Program

“Programming is understanding.”

– Kristen Nygaard

Writing a program involves gradually refining your ideas of what you want to do and how you want to express it. In this chapter and the next, we will develop a program from a first vague idea through stages of analysis, design, implementation, testing, redesign, and re-implementation. Our aim is to give you some idea of the kind of thinking that goes on when you develop a piece of code. In the process, we discuss program organization, user-defined types, and input processing.

6.1 A problem

6.2 Thinking about the problem

6.2.1 Stages of development

6.2.2 Strategy

6.3 Back to the calculator!

6.3.1 First attempt

6.3.2 Tokens

6.3.3 Implementing tokens

6.3.4 Using tokens

6.3.5 ...