CST 205 Week 5

CST 205 Week 5

I read a chapter about tips on debugging. I found it very useful. I especially liked the idea of printing variables to see what the are doing at the beginning of loops and recursive functions. It gave good tips on creating many functions to minimize debugging time on large groups of code. Reading this chapter helped put a perspective that readability and simplicity of code is essential in order to make debugging easier. Finally the tip of taking a break is good as frustration only gets worse when in front of the computer.

Top down programming is creating a program by first starting with the overall scope of the project and moving to smaller pieces of the project. Bottom up programming is just the opposite where you move from the smallest tasks first that a part of the whole to end up with compiling them together for the finished product at the end. Either choice can be effective if different scenarios; the key is to always have a plan in place.

Here are some good sources for debugging that I found:

https://pythonconquerstheuniverse.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/debugging-in-python/


https://zapier.com/engineering/debugging-python-boss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g49UECaIDOs

This week we worked as a group to make a text based game. This assignment was right up my ally as I am wanting to enter a career in game development. Although the assignment was simplistic it gave  a good understanding of the collaboration necessary in creating a quality game. We could easily have expanded upon this game and taken months to achieve the desired product. We used a top down approach in the game design. First designing the overall rooms and layout of the house and then dividing up the sections among team members to complete. We then met to collaborate and mold all of the pieces together. This assignment was fun, challenging, and educational.