Iterative Development

• Computer rule #2: Programs are always more complicated to write than they seem at first.
• For any program more complicated than "Hello world!", you should try to break the development process into small working parts.  Then after you feel confident that each piece is working, integrate the pieces together.
• As you start putting the pieces together, test as many small working examples as you can.  When you discover problems, go back and fix them, and then test again.  Then when you are ready, add a new piece.
  
• Basically you keep going around in circles, but moving forward a bit on each cycle.
  
• For example, say you have a program to write which your boss describes as:

       Go through the user information.  If a user has more than 5 late 
       notices, generate a message and send an email.  Anyone who 
       doesn't have any late notices should be put in our Good Guy database,
       and have a Christmas card automatically sent to them.  
       Handle all errors cleanly.  If this crashes in a customer's office
       you will need to explain this personally to the vice-president.

• With just a little thought, you will realize that this "specification" has a lot of things missing.
  
• Rather than getting lost in the big picture, it's easiest to break the problem down into parts.  You should write small working programs that do individual tasks and make sure they work before going on.  You should also ask yourself a lot of questions before you start any coding.  In this example, what are some of the things you need to think about?
  
• As you can see, even a relatively simple project description generates a lot of  small work components.  The key is to get the small pieces working before trying to make it all work together.
• Error and exception handling: In a similar way, you want to make sure that you know how to handle errors.  The key is asking lots of "what if" questions.
  

Your First Project

• Create an array with 3 names in it.  Print out the contents of the array (each entry) using a foreach loop.
• Create a 5 element array.  Print out the size (number of elements) of the array.
• Generate a random number between 0 and 10 (use the example.)  Print it out.
  
• Create a 5 element array with the following entires: Eric, Brad, Owen, Ronnie, Creek.  Assign the string "Owen" to a scaler variable.  Using a foreach loop, look through the array until you find "Owen" and print out a message.
• Create the same 5 element array.  This time prompt the user for a name, put it in a scaler variable, and search the list for it.  Print out a message saying whether you found it or not.
  
• Create an array with the first names of all of the upper school students.  Generate a random number between 0 and the number of names in the array.