How this class works#
In this section we will talk about the final project for the class, why it’s important, and some of the things that you will learn as you implement it. This project is designed with a number of goals in mind:
To demonstate a real-world and current problem being solved every day by software running in cars, on phones, or on computers.
To learn about programming in a modern computer language, in this case, the Python language that is used by software engineers every day
To learn modern programming techniques that will make you better at solving not just programming problems that you might have in the future, but complex problems in general where the use of these principles will help you develop your own solutions.
Top-down design#
Even though the final project can be challenging, we will approach the problem the same way you might do it if you were an engineer designing a navigation system. We will break the problem down into simpler tasks until we get to ones we can solve, then solve those, and keep moving towards the full solution. We’ll talk more about this top-down design concept in a future lesson.
Reuse of code#
Another way of simplifying the implementation of a complex program is to reuse as much code as possible. That means that as we write and test the pieces of the project in our top-down design, we will try to write those smaller programs so that they can be reused with little to no changes to implement the final design. That way, once we write some code, say, line following, once we know it works we can keep reusing it without having to write it again for other parts of the program.
To have the best chance of a high level of code reuse, we will implement the pieces of the program using an Object Oriented design. We’ll talk more about what this means later, but it is a way of building up the larger program from the smaller, and easier-to-write and easier-to-test smaller components.