Program Implementation

Section 18.3 Program Implementation - 1

Now we want to start building and testing the actual code. We will start with the low-level procedures that do not depend on anything else. Then once we are sure they are working, we will build higher-level procedures that depend on them. This strategy is known as bottom up implementation.

A critical part of successfully building a program is testing as we go. We need to make sure that each of our procedures does its job correctly before we try to use it to do something more complicated.

Warning 18.3.1.

Remember, debugging code is often harder than writing it in the first place. It is much easier to find and fix errors in small blocks of code than in a giant program.

My lowest-level procedure was rectangle, so let’s start building that. In the sample below, I have attempted to write the procedure.

I have done a few things to make it easier to use the rectangle procedure. First, I have it put the pen down and do begin_fill at the start and pick the pen back up and end_fill at the end. This means my procedure does not depend on other code having already set up the pen. Second left a comment at the start of the procedure reminding myself of assumptions I have made - in this case that the turtle is facing East. An assumption that is made by a procedure is known as a precondition to the procedure - it is something that must already be true when we start for the procedure to work correctly.

I’ll also write some code to test it. I will try to use my procedure to draw a few different rectangles - first, a 50x50 rectangle (a square), followed by a 10x100 narrow But tall rectangle. Try the code:

It looks like there is a bug! The square seemed to work, but not the narrow/tall rectangle.

See if you can fix the rectangle code. You might want to comment out or remove the line that says rectangle(steve, 50, 50) so you can focus just on the case that is causing problems - the 10x100 rectangle. If you get stuck, you can peek ahead at the next page. (Hint: you should need to change two lines.)

Subsection 18.3.1 Implementation Discussion

Once you fix my bug, the procedure works just fine. But we could improve it. Here are some ideas that would arguably make it better:

It could take the color to draw as a parameter and then do fill_color to set the color inside rectangle. This way, the caller could just say rectangle(steve, 50, 50, "light blue") and not worry about doing the fill_color step itself.
Turtle’s have a setheading command. Instead of assuming a precondition that the turtle is facing East, we could have rectangle use it to face the turtle East at the start of the procedure.

Most programmers would see these as improvements because they make the procedure easier to use correctly (by removing a precondition), or they make it more powerful (by having it take care of the fill color). But, it is possible to overcomplicate a procedure by trying to make it too general.

Designing good code is often a balancing act. There is never one right design for a complex problem. But some designs are better and some designs are worse. We seek designs that are the best possible combination of flexible, simple, and robust.

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