Programming fundamentals and structured programming

Learning objectives

Declare variables and constants with meaningful identifiers, assign values to them, and explain why a value that never changes should be held in a constant

Write programs that use sequence, selection with IF and CASE statements, and iteration with count-controlled, pre-condition and post-condition loops, choosing the loop that fits the problem

Write procedures and functions that take parameters, explain the difference between passing a parameter by value and by reference, and state what a function returns to the calling statement

Explain the scope of local and global variables, and justify why local variables and parameters are preferred to global variables in a program of any size

Use built-in library routines for string handling, arithmetic and random number generation, and explain the benefit of reusing code that has already been tested

Apply the principles of structured programming by dividing a solution into modules that each have one well-defined purpose, and explain how that makes the program easier to test and to maintain