[1st Year] Graded Unit (All topics) Flashcards
What are the 3 problem-solving tools?
- Flowcharts
- Brainstorming
- Solution Matrix
What is a flowchart?
A pictorial representation of the steps involved in a process. Arrows link elements to show the flow of a process and link together either the start/end of a process, an activity or a decision point. A flowchart should define the boundaries of a process and be based on reality.
What is brainstorming?
A group of people generates ideas. Designed to push creativity, excitement and motivation a brainstorming session should be either structured (everyone speaks in turn) or unstructured (just shout out what’s in your head) and only stops when everyone has exhausted their ideas.
What is a solution matrix?
This tool is designed to guide a team to make choices between potential solutions. It allows you to explore each potential solution and ‘rank’ your solutions, so it should help you to agree on picking the ‘best’ solution (as voted on by all members of the group).
What is a test strategy?
A test strategy is an outline that describes the testing approach that you are using. It is created to inform project managers, testers, and developers about some key issues of the testing process. This includes the testing objective, methods of testing new functions, total time and resources required for the project, and the testing environment.
What is a test plan?
The test plan document is usually prepared by the Test Lead or Test Manager and the focus of the document is to describe what to test, how to test when to test and who will do what test.
What is a linear approach?
Picking a solution to a problem and going through with it until the end, regardless of whether it works or not. Commonly, you would document each step and the outcomes of those steps.
What is a half split approach?
Commonly used by more experienced technicians - you would use an educated guess as to where a fault may lie and attempt to resolve it by using a solution using your experience.
What are the 7 systematic steps to troubleshooting?
1 - 4. Identify the symptoms, area, changes, source of problem.
- Implement the solution
- Test the solution
- Analyse the possible effects of the solution
What are the 7 stages of development?
- Analysis
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
- Documentation
- Evaluation
- Maintenance
What is the name of the development/design process that follows these steps:
- Analysis
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
- Documentation
- Evaluation
- Maintenance
Waterfall design/development
What is step 3 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Implementation. In this stage, you would create the program itself.
What does R.A.D stand for?
Rapid Application Development
What is step 1 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Analysis. This stage is where you would gather the information with the client. You would conduct survey and questionnaires to gather information on how the program will function.
What is step 2 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Design. This is where you would produce a design of the program using pseudocode and other design techniques.
What is step 4 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Testing. This is where testing of the program will be done. The testing will be done from the designed test plan.
What is step 5 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Documentation. This is when all documentation is created. Things like the user manual on how to use the program.
What is step 6 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Evaluation. This stage you would evaluate the team and you as an individual on how the task went. You would also gather information from the client on the program and how it does.
What is step 7 in the waterfall design model and what is its purpose?
Maintenance. This is for future development for the software thing like patches and error problems that were not discovered in the testing stage.
What are the 4 key elements in good programming practice?
- Portability
- Maintainability
- Reliability
- Efficiency
What is a sequence?
[Programming]
A sequence is one line of code executed after another.
Explain what selection is.
[Programming]
An if statement is an example of selection; a question is asked, and depending on the answer, the program takes one of ‘x’ courses of action, after which the program moves on to the next event.
What is repetition?
[Programming]
A loop is an example of repetition. It is where a section of code is repeated until, for example, a condition is met.
What does it mean when code is interpreted?
It means that code is interpreted by the interpreter, then executed one line at a time.
What is compiled code?
Compiled code is translated all in one go, then stored for execution.
Explain what a function is.
Functions are “self contained” modules of code that accomplish a specific task. Functions usually “take in” data, process it, and “return” a result. Once a function is written, it can be used over and over and over again.
Functions can be “called” from the inside of other functions.
What is a local variable?
A local variable is one that is defined inside of a function or sub procedure - it can only be used where it is initialised and cannot explicitly be used within another function or sub.
What is a global variable?
A global variable is defined in a class, rather than a function or sub. It can be used throughout the whole program.
What is an algorithm?
A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations.
Name the 3 design tools.
[Programming]
- Pseudocode
- System Flowchart
- Structure diagram
What is pseudocode?
Pseudocode is code that can be understood by non-programmers. It is a method of designing a program before you actually code it.
What is a system flowchart?
[Programming]
A system flowchart shows links between major modules, system resources, hardware and data memory.
What is a structure diagram?
[Programming]
Boxes are linked by line and arrows to show the module and the control and data relationships.
What is Rapid Application Development?
Prototyping is designed to reduce development if a program by allowing users to use a version of the program and gather feedback.
What is a link editor?
A program that takes one or more object and combines them together.
What is type-casting?
It is when you take an object or value of one type and you convert it to another. E.g. Decimal to Integer.
|| and && are examples of which kind of operators?
Logical.
+/- are examples of which kind of operators?
Arithmetic.
== and != are examples of which kind of operators?
Assignment.
What is a pre-conditional loop?
The loop has a pre-defined condition which it checks before the loop… ehm… loops again!
What is a nested IF?
An IF inside of another IF ಠ⌣ಠ
What is a compound IF?
A compound IF is one that has more than one condition.
What are variables?
A variable is a way to store data inside of memory.
Why do you initialise variables?
When a variable is declared, it will point to a piece of memory.
Accessing the value of the variable will give you the contents of that piece of memory.
However until the variable is initialised, that piece of memory could contain anything. This is why using it is unpredictable.
TL;DR You do it because that memory location could already hold data.
What is an integer?
An integer is a whole number.
What is a string?
A string is an array of characters, for example, a word or a sentence.
What is a float?
A float is a 32-bit decimal number a.k.a a real number.
What is a double?
A double is a 64-bit decimal number.
What is a do-loop?
A do while loop is a control flow statement that executes a block of code at least once, and then repeatedly executes the block, or not, depending on a given boolean condition at the end of the block.
What is a while-loop?
A while loop is a control flow statement that allows code to be executed repeatedly based on a given Boolean condition. The while loop can be thought of as a repeating if statement.
What is a for-loop?
A for loops is a control flow statement for specifying iteration, which allows code to be executed repeatedly.
What is an array?
A series of objects all of which are the same size and type.
What is an event-driven program?
Event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions (mouse clicks, key presses), sensor outputs, or messages from other programs/threads.
Why should a program have input validation?
To determine whether the input received is valid and can be processed by the program without throwing errors, crashing or doing something that is out of bounds of the program specification.
What is the difference between a programming syntactical rule and a convention?
A syntactical rule is a rule that must be followed for the code to work a convention is a rule for good practice like using meaningful variable names.