Defensive Programming and Testing (yr 11)

Defensive programming is a practice of writing code that anticipates and handles misuse, errors, and unexpected inputs to make programs more reliable and secure.

• Input Validation: Ensures inputs are in the expected format. • Authentication: Verifies user identity (e.g. login systems). • Maintainable Code: Using comments, indentation, and meaningful variable names to improve readability.

Testing carried out during development to ensure each part of the program works as it is built.

Testing performed once development is complete to check the whole system meets requirements.

A table used to manually track the values of variables and outputs at each step in an algorithm to detect logic errors.

• Normal data: Inputs that are expected and valid. • Boundary data: Values at the edge of acceptable ranges. • Erroneous data: Invalid inputs used to test error handling.