Introduction A pointer is a variable whose value is the address of another variable. Hence we think of them as pointing to another variable. Knowing the specific address of a variable is typically not what we are interested in. Instead, we can use the pointer to access the value of the variable whose address is stored in the pointer variable. Pointer variables have their own type, which should match the type of variable that they point to. For example, a…
People learning to program often struggle with how to decompose a problem into the steps necessary to write a program to solve that problem. This is one of a series of posts in which I take a problem and go through my decision-making process that leads to a program. Background: I once attended a presentation by an amateur magician in which he stated that performing 8 perfect shuffles in a row on a deck of 52 cards returned the deck to the…
People learning to program often struggle with how to decompose a problem into the steps necessary to write a program to solve that problem. This is one of a series of posts in which I take a problem and go through my decision-making process that leads to a program. Background: I once attended a presentation by an amateur magician in which he stated that performing 8 perfect shuffles in a row on a deck of 52 cards returned the deck…
People learning to program often struggle with how to decompose a problem into the steps necessary to write a program to solve that problem. This is one of a series of posts in which I take a problem and go through my decision-making process that leads to a program. The problem: produce a multiplication table. I assume that at this point you know about statements, conditionals, loops, and functions. You can find a video with more details at https://youtu.be/QJqfYn_4pmw. Design…