Program Development

Stroustrup writes that the last section of his book aims

to bridge the gap between would-be language-independent design and programming that is myopically focussed on details. Both ends of this spectrum have their place in a large project, but to avoid disaster and excessive cost, they must be part of a continuum of concerns and techniques.

Programs vary considerably in their composition. I've seen these figures quoted

• Coding takes 10% of the total time. Debugging takes 50%.
• The Graphical User Interface is 80% of the code
• Error handling can be 50% of the code

Complexity is the enemy, so

• Divide and conquer.
• Use modules - namespaces or files (helps the optimiser too).

Don't re-invent the wheel

• Copy models
• Adapt existing parts
• When making new parts design them for re-use