What are some concepts people should understand before programming "big" projects?

Posted by Abafei on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Abafei
Published on 2011-03-23T22:21:24Z Indexed on 2012/07/05 21:23 UTC
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concepts

A person new to programming may be able to make a good small program.

However, when starting to work on anything bigger than a small (think 1 C source file or Python module) program, there are some general concepts which become much more important when working on "big" (think many Python modules or C files) programs; one example is modularity, another is having a set aim.

Some of these may be obvious to people who went to school to learn programming; however, people like me who did not go to programming classes sometimes have to learn these things from experience, possibly creating failed projects in the meantime.

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Please explain what the concept is, and why the concept becomes more important for big programs than by small programs.

Please give only 1 concept per answer.

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