If you’re a beginner this Tech-Recipe is for you. If you’re a professional coder than this Tech-Recipe is a happy reminder. A reminder of why your school professor emphasized so much on writing programs with more modularity. Modularity is the beauty of any code, it improves readability which leads to better understandability.Â
We will be writing a C++ Program , to demonstrate our programming tech-recipes. This is because this language is simple, OOP, procedural and structured as well. This Tech-Recipe is about writing a program that’s more Readable and Modular
Why adopt the modular approach
Modules are basically independent chunks of programs, that may or may not take up a value and end up calculating a useful result. Modular programming can make a program easy to conceive and in longer codes, modularity leads to understandability and debugging is a lot easier. This leads to better maintenance. The program can be better organized which again creates readability. As a beginner, you should start paying attention to converting your code to independent bits called modules.
2 Ways To Make Your Program More Readable and Modular
1. Functions
We can call “function” a module. A function is a set of statements that take inputs, do some specific computation and produces output. The very idea of using a function is to avoid repetition of statements in the program. If a computation is being performed, repeatedly, you shouldn’t be writing the same piece of code again and again. In fact, you should write one piece of code and call it whenever you need that computation done.
Below is a small example
1. Add required libraries (I am using DEV C++ IDE, it’s simple and comfortable)
2. Make the main function (Execution of a program starts from main function)
3. I wrote a random program
Now, this program is good enough it y’all have only one value of a and b variables. What if you need to sum up many values of a and b.Here’s how you can convert this into a module program.
4. Declare the function in main function
5. Define the function inside or outside the main function
If you’re defining the function outside main, then you must declare it in main
6. Call the function and send as different parameters every time you call the function respective answers will be returned.
2. Block scoped variables
Simply bounding a particular piece of code in brackets can limit the scope of variables defined in it. The greatest advantage of block-scoped variables is that they localize the impact of changes. You no longer have to worry about accidental modifications of data.
There are many more ways through which a programmer can bring modularity to his/her code. However, we are going to cover more in another Tech-Recipe.
Programming is the most enjoyable activity. You’re never great at it because you’re always learning. If you’re a beginner you should learn from other programmers experience. Read more content about coding. Don’t just sit straight at a compiler. We will present you with more such Tech-Recipes.