Designing a solution: structure diagrams, flowcharts and pseudocode
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The teaching part (1 min) is free to watch. A free account opens the whole lecture: 6 practice questions, 2 real past-paper questions with the answers explained, the mistakes that lose marks, the full-marks tip, a one-card summary and a quick quiz.
What this lecture covers
- Three ways to draw a plan
- Structure diagrams
- A quiz program
Read the transcript of the teaching part
Last time
Before we start: last time, in The program development life cycle and decomposition, you learned these points. Here they are again on one card. Keep them in mind, because today builds on them.
Three ways to draw a plan
An architect draws a plan before anyone builds. Programmers have three kinds of plan. A structure diagram shows the parts. A flowchart shows the order of the steps. And pseudocode shows the steps in words. Cambridge asks about all three.
Structure diagrams
A structure diagram is a hierarchical diagram that shows how a system breaks down into sub-systems. It is read from the top downwards. It uses boxes and lines only, with no arrows and no decisions. Every box has exactly one parent above it.
A quiz program
Here is a quiz program. At the top is the whole program. On the next level are four sub-systems: display question, get answer, check answer and update score. Get answer breaks down again into input answer, and validate answer.
How often it comes up
The whole chapter: Computer System, Sub-System and Decomposition.
Chapter 7.2: Design tools
- Designing a solution: structure diagrams, flowcharts and pseudocode 6 min
Also for IGCSE Computer Science 0478
Which topics come up most in IGCSE Computer Science 0478 past papers, counted from every paper since 2004: Paper 1 topic frequency, Paper 2 topic frequency.