Book Image

Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners

By : Joakim Wassberg
4 (1)
Book Image

Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners

4 (1)
By: Joakim Wassberg

Overview of this book

Learning how to code has many advantages, and gaining the right programming skills can have a massive impact on what you can do with your current skill set and the way you advance in your career. This book will be your guide to learning computer programming easily, helping you overcome the difficulties in understanding the major constructs in any mainstream programming language. Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners starts by taking you through the building blocks of any programming language with thorough explanations and relevant examples in pseudocode. You'll understand the relationship between computer programs and programming languages and how code is executed on the computer. The book then focuses on the different types of applications that you can create with your programming knowledge. You'll delve into programming constructs, learning all about statements, operators, variables, and data types. As you advance, you'll see how to control the flow of your programs using control structures and reuse your code using functions. Finally, you'll explore best practices that will help you write code like a pro. By the end of this book, you'll be prepared to learn any programming language and take control of your career by adding coding to your skill set.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Computer Programs and Computer Programming
6
Section 2: Constructs of a Programming Language
7
Chapter 5: Sequence – The Basic Building Block of a Computer Program
14
Section 3: Best Practices for Writing High-Quality Code
Appendix B: Dictionary
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W

Unit testing

Testing our code is essential so that we can verify that it does what it should. We will also use tests to make sure that any changes we make to the code have not made things that previously worked stop working or behave in an undesired way.

Several kinds of testing can be done on our code, and the first type of test we will look at is called a unit test. The unit part indicates that the test will be done on a separate unit of our code. This is typically at a function level. This means that we will try to isolate one single function (or another small unit of code) and run our tests on just that unit.

These tests are typically written by the developer of the code unit to be tested and are often automated. This means that as soon as a block of code is ready to be committed to the version control system, it must first pass the unit test written for it.

Since the unit test only tests a single code unit, they are typically rather trivial. To test our calc functions...