The key to developing
programs
Meet regularly with your customer
Although this sounds obvious this mistake has
been made too often. Customer go to their software producing company, explain
what they want from them and come back after some months to see the beta
version and complain about the usability or technical features. This means the
program designer has to start all over again and that’s not what we want. So
make sure to meet with your customer regularly and show them your progress so
that they can give feedback on your work.
Use the right software
The right kind of programming software is the
key to making a structured design as well as structured source code. It makes
programming a lot easier as it shows an error with an explanation every time
you make a mistake. Most development software is free to use. Some examples are
Eclipse and Netbeans. For designing a program in UML I recommend using Visual
Paradigm as it is the easiest to use and it can be integrated with the software
above.
Less is more
When designing a piece of software make sure to
think it trough. Don’t make 7 classes when 5 will do because this will slowdown
the performance of the software. Think of easy ways to achieve your goal and
make sure to check the internet for information when you’re stuck. Also make
use of meaningful names for your methods. This way you know exactly what they’re
used for.
3 Layer model
Every programmer/designer has to understand the
three layer model and has to be capable to use it in the right way. What’s the
purpose of using this model? Real simple: When we have to adjust some details
in of the layers we don’t have to adjust the other layers. For people who haven’t got a clue what I’m
talking about the three layer model splits your code into three parts. The “Graphical
User Interface layer”, the “Domain layer” and the “Persistence layer”. These
three layers communicate with each other in the same order.
The Graphical User Interface layer (GUI): The
GUI interacts with the clients. This is what people see on their screen when
they use a program. The buttons, the text fields, … are all programmed in a way
to improve usability. This GUI layer contains no methods that involve
manipulating data.
The Domain layer: This layer contains all
methods that are used to manipulate data. For example: Calculating a formula.
The Persistence Layer: The Persistence layer
contains data. It can possess lists of different kind of data or it can make a
connection to a databank.
When you
cover all these paragraphs you will see that designing and programming will go
a lot smoother when using a structured design.
