理解stepwise refinement in Programming

• Low-level design vs. High-level design

  Low level design(LLD) is a component-level design process that follows a step-by-step refinement process. The LLD phase is the stage where the actual software components are designed.

  High level design(HLD) is the general system design means it refers to the overall system design. It describes the overall description/architecture of the application.

• Stepwise Refinement

  Stepwise refinement is a basic technique for low-level design.

  Invented by Niklaus Wirth in 1971, it may be the oldest systematic approach to software design still in use.

  Stepwise Refinement is the process of breaking down a programming problem into a series of steps.

  Its a top-down design mode.

  

• Pseudo-Code

  Fundamental to the process of stepwise refinement is pseudocode, a low-level design tool or notation hat allows us the flexibility to write about algorithms that we don’t entirely understand yet.

  Pseudo-Code is also known as “structured English”

• Much more clearly description

  Stepwise refinement: design a problem solution by :

  1. Starting the solution at a high level
  2. Refining steps of the solution into simpler steps
  3. Repeating step 2, until steps are simple enough to execute

  Decompose based on function of each step

  Makes heavy use of pseudocode

• Modularity and stepwise refinement

  The idea underlying modularity is, in short, the decomposition of a complicated task into a group of small independent subtasks.

• References

1. Difference between High Level Design and Low level Design
2. Learnlearn: stepwise refinement
3. Steven Zeil
4. Radford.edu
5. Openu.ac.il