Programming with a Plan

Hello everyone,
In order to be able to program various things, it is importat to know how to set up a program and go into a project with a plan. There are three important parts of a program: the outputs that are required, the inputs that you will recieve, and finally the alorithm to order to get the desired outputs from the recieved inputs. To make things easier upon yourself, take out a seperate piece of paper and write what you want to do before you actually try to code it. After you finish coding the program and run it you can determine if it does what you want by checking out what the outputs were.
If you do not get the outputs that you want then the best thing that you can do is take a small break and get out a sheet of paper and follow the different sections to determine a variable's value at that given point. One of the good things that you can do is draw a picture or diagram, especially when you get to the more complex codes. When you use these steps, then you can make a good program without having a lot of stress