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Question 1

What are the four stages of SDLC?

Answer 1

Requirement analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing.

Question 2

What are the five stages of SDLC / what is the fifth stage of SDLC?

Answer 2

The fifth stage is Deployment. The optional sixth is Maintenance.

Question 3

Two different ways of meeting user requirements. What are they? Advantages and Disadvantages.

Answer 3

1) Interview: allows detailed feedback but time-consuming. 2) Questionnaire: quicker but less in-depth.

Question 4

What are three properties of an IDE? What can IDE not do?

Answer 4

Syntax highlighting, auto-completion, debugging tools. Cannot ensure logic correctness or remove all bugs.

Question 5

Using a labelled diagram briefly explain what a flowchart is. Advantages and disadvantages.

Answer 5

Flowchart: diagram showing logic flow using symbols (start/end, actions, decisions). Advantage: visual clarity. Disadvantage: can become complex.

Question 6

Using a labelled diagram briefly explain what a pseudocode is. Advantages and disadvantages.

Answer 6

Pseudocode: informal, human-readable steps. Advantage: easy to write. Disadvantage: not executable.

Question 7

What is casting?

Answer 7

Casting is converting a value from one data type to another (e.g., float to int).

Question 8

Using a labelled diagram briefly explain what a variable is.

Answer 8

A variable is a named storage in memory. Diagram: shows variable name pointing to value in memory.

Question 9

List the rules for naming variables.

Answer 9

Must start with a letter or underscore, case-sensitive, no special symbols, no Python keywords.

Question 10

List the comparison operators.

Answer 10

==, !=, >, <, >=, <=

Question 11

List the arithmetic operators (6).

Answer 11

+, -, *, /, %, **

Question 12

Using labelled diagram briefly explain three types of selection.

Answer 12

If, if-else, if-elif-else (diagram: branch logic flow based on conditions).

Question 13

What are the two main types of iteration?

Answer 13

While loop and for loop.

Question 14

With examples, briefly explain three simple data types.

Answer 14

int (e.g. 5), float (e.g. 3.14), bool (e.g. True).

Question 15

With an example briefly explain what a string is and how it is not the same as a simple data type.

Answer 15

A string is a sequence of characters (e.g. ‘hello’) — not a primitive numeric type, it’s immutable.

Question 16

Using a small piece of code, briefly explain the syntax of a function and how a function works.

Answer 16

def greet(): print(‘Hello’) – ‘def’ defines the function, ‘greet()’ calls it.

Question 17

Using an example, briefly explain what concatenation is.

Answer 17

‘Hello’ + ‘ World’ = ‘Hello World’.

Question 18

Write a piece of code to convert the keyboard entry to be converted to an int.

Answer 18

user_input = int(input(‘Enter a number: ‘))

Question 19

Using a piece of code briefly explain what is meant by string slicing.

Answer 19

s = ‘Python’; print(s[1:4]) → ‘yth’ – slicing extracts a substring.

Question 20

What is a function?

Answer 20

A function is a reusable block of code that performs a specific task.

Question 21

Write a syntactically correct program for a function and a function call.

Answer 21

def greet(): print(‘Hi’); greet()