Lecture 11

Question 1

What is a root?

Answer 1

The top in a tree or hierarchical structure.

Question 2

What is the branching ratio?

Answer 2

The average number of children to parent nodes

Question 3

What are leaf nodes?

Answer 3

Nodes without any children

Question 4

What is a debugger?

Answer 4

A debugger is a tool that makes debugging easier.

A debugger is typically part of an IDE

Question 5

What is debug mode?

Answer 5

The mode a program needs to be coded in to use the debugger.

Question 6

What is release mode?

Answer 6

The mode a program is typically compiled into when debugging is done.

Question 7

What is the continue button?

Answer 7

A button that allows you to run the code until the next break

Question 8

What are the five debugging tools that are used 90% of the time?

Answer 8

1. Break points
2. Step over
3. Step into
4. Operations
5. Variable values

Question 9

What are break points?

Answer 9

A point in a program where the program breaks.

A breakpoint is set in the leftmost column by selecting next to the line where you would like to place the break point. The code will break right before this line.

Question 10

What is step over?

Answer 10

Step over allows you to go through the code and execute it one line at a time.

A yellow arrow marker will show which line you are on. The step over button can be selected to move to the next line.

Question 11

What is step into?

Answer 11

Step into allows you to go into a function if it is in that line of command.

You can step out of the function using step out when you are done.

Question 12

What are variable values?

Answer 12

They allow you to see the values of the variables at a point in the code.

Question 13

What is top down design in coding?

Answer 13

Breaking the code into smaller and smaller steps starting from the big picture and working down.

Question 14

What is typically used to break down a program in top down design?

Answer 14

A tree

Question 15

What is the depth of a tree?

Answer 15

The number of levels in a tree.

Question 16

What are the rules of thumb for depth and branching ratio of a tree?

Answer 16

1. Don’t use so many tasks that it is difficult to understand how they relate to the parent node.
2. The depth should be deep enough that each individual node can be understood by an experienced programmer without them seeing the whole project.

Question 17

Where is top down design used in code?

Answer 17

As headers where each level is designated.

Question 18

What is incremental development?

Answer 18

Writing code piece by piece (or node by node for top down design) and then testing to make sure it works.

Question 19

What are three good steps to writing a large program?

Answer 19

1. Create a top down design (using a tree)
2. Build the program incrementally
3. Use a debugger to determine if things are working properly.