Planning programming tasks prior to coding can help developers reduce mistakes, aggravation, and time spent on the task. It can also assist you in organising your resources, tools, and testing procedures, as well as in defining your objectives, requirements, and scope.
To plan a coding project, there are several stages you must go through. Here are steps outlined on this page to help you plan with ease
Choose What to Create in your coding Project
You can post your project after each step and see what your peers suggest to improve your work. The online community usually are very eager to help learners like you and me! When you plan before code, you get time to list out every feature of your program, make priorities and separate the essential and nonessential components of your program. Planning phase also allows you to map the project architecture and this is where sticky notes come in-play.
Why not make a game to assess your vocabulary when learning a foreign language, for instance? Working on a project like this can help you improve your coding abilities while also producing a useful result.
Check out these coding project ideas for some inspiration if you’re still having trouble coming up with ideas.
Create a Text Editor
The application you’ll use to write your code is a text editor, so be sure to have one you enjoy using and are proficient with. In order to clear the path, finish this first. for instance Sublime Text is a popular text editor. It’s available for PC, Mac and Linux, has many useful features and is easy on the eye too.
Map the project architecture
When you plan before coding, you have more time to create a feature list, set priorities, and distinguish between programme components that are necessary and those that are not. The project architecture can also be mapped during the planning phase, which is when sticky notes come in handy.
As you look through similar projects, see what problems they encountered and how they overcame those problems. You can use this information to anticipate problems in your own project. You can also use their solutions as a starting point. Also, add any sites or forums that have project feedback to your list.
Design
Technically, you can begin coding as soon as you have a concept and a text editor. However, it doesn’t mean you have to. It makes reasonable to design a website or app before developing anything else. This comprises, but is not restricted to
- how it looks and presentation
- the features that it will have
- the way that the user will utilise it.
The mechanics of the game would need to be designed if you were creating a translation game. You may designate, for instance, that a user will enter a text field to translate a foreign word that appears on the screen, and the game will verify their entry.
You may choose to design your project’s aesthetics after construction has begun or before. It will primarily depend on the level of seriousness of your endeavour.
Plan Your Code
It’s time to design your code after you have an idea of the final product you want to achieve with your project. Probably the most crucial planning phase of them all is this one. Divide your intended programme into smaller programmes, or more precisely, functions, to help you organise your code. For instance, the following features would be needed for a translation game:
- a function that adds terms and their translations to the appropriate arrays
- a function that every word calls function 1
- functions to load words onto the screen, trigger events when user input is accurate
- a function to fire when the user’s input is inaccurate
- a function to determine whether to fire function 4 or function 5.
Your code will be more clearer if you plan it this way. You will then be fully aware of the code that has to be written.
Furthermore It is possible that during the planning stages of your project, you discovered some more items that need to be set up. For instance, you’ll need to register web hosting and a domain name if you’re building a website. Alternatively, you’ll need to create a developer account if you’re creating an app for an iPad or iPhone.
Create a Timetable
Your project will most likely take some time to finish if it is ambitious. Making a schedule could be a smart option because of this.
For instance, your plan might be to dedicate 30 minutes each night at 9 p.m. to working on your coding project. You might spend the first few days’ thirty minutes studying, after which you might write the code, debug it, and then refine it.
Conclusion
Coding is enjoyable, but let’s face it—problems, bugs, and the like can make it frustrating and even make you feel like a failure. However, if you plan out your project before you even start, you will have a better understanding of it and will be better prepared to handle any errors or challenges that may arise—because the question is not if they will occur, but rather when.
It’s similar to taking a test on a question you know the solution to, planning before you code. How do you go about working on programming projects? I’d want to know how you tackle this.
