Understand What the Program Needs to do

◀ Robustness of a Program▶ Working on Paper First versus Working on Computer Amazon Anybody with programming experience most likely agrees that everything has a tough beginning. In programming, you must be able to rid yourself of any doubts before you can start. If you have doubts about the objective or implementation of an assigned programming task, bring them up to your instructor, teaching assistant, or even friends in the same discipline.

Make sure you absolutely understand what you need to do in the program.
I have the experience that I misunderstood a small part of a programming assignment I was writing and ended up earning only half of the credit. Even if I did detect this little misunderstanding before I turned the assignment in, chances are that I needed to pull major changes in my program and I wouldn’t be able to turn it in on time.

Therefore, knowing what the program needs to do is the first task at hand.

Next let’s look at how you can visualize what your program should be doing!
◀ Robustness of a Program▶ Working on Paper First versus Working on Computer