WJEC Eduqas A Level Computer Science (A500QS)Specification point 1.8

Eduqas A500QS 1.8: Program construction

The free BugBot lessons that teach this point, a robot to try it on, and the past-paper questions that test it.

Lessons that teach it

  1. A1.5 Scope, lifetime and debugging in an IDE Programming techniques and object-oriented programming
    Local and global variables, why locals are good practice, and breakpoints, stepping, watches and tracebacks.
  2. A1.10 Project: the behaviour controller Programming techniques and object-oriented programming
    Get past a wall to the dock with prioritised behaviour classes, a controller that aggregates them, and an exception to finish.
  3. A6.5 Backus-Naur Form and syntax diagrams Theory of computation
    Production rules, syntax diagrams, a grammar for robot programs, recursive descent, and why BNF can describe what a regex cannot.
  4. A10.7 Programming languages and translators Operating systems, software and translators
    Machine code, assembly and imperative high-level languages, the Little Man Computer, and choosing an assembler, compiler, interpreter or…
  5. A10.8 Stages of compilation, linkers and loaders Operating systems, software and translators
    Lexical analysis, syntax analysis, code generation and optimisation, then static and dynamic linking and the loader.
  6. A15.1 How your A level is assessed Exam preparation
    The papers and the project for OCR H446, AQA 7517 and Eduqas A500QS, the assessment objectives, and a timing plan built with integer…
  7. A15.2 Command words and levels of response Exam preparation
    What each command word asks for, how extended answers are marked in levels, and a marker that levels answers with regular expressions.
  8. A15.3 Trace tables and hand-tracing Exam preparation
    Tracing loops, recursion and Little Man Computer programs without slips, and a binary search that prints its own trace table.
  9. A15.4 Pseudocode in the exam languages Exam preparation
    OCR's exam reference language and AQA's pseudo-code side by side with Python, the traps in translating, and a stack class that brings the…
  10. A15.5 Writing algorithms and code in the exam Exam preparation
    Planning before writing, how code is marked, the standard algorithms to know by heart, and Dijkstra's algorithm driving the robot.
  11. A15.6 Pre-release material and skeleton programs Exam preparation
    Getting to know a skeleton program before the exam, the questions asked about it, and making exam-style changes to one.
  12. A15.7 Calculation and theory questions Exam preparation
    Number representation, floating point, Boolean logic, state machines and complexity answered quickly and checked.
  13. A15.8 A revision plan and mixed practice Exam preparation
    Mapping the specification, retrieval, spacing and interleaving, and a spaced repetition scheduler for the whole course.

Try it on a robot

The task from A1.5 Scope, lifetime and debugging in an IDE, running here. Change the program and press Run.

The specification is Eduqas's own document; this page says which of our lessons teach point 1.8 and is not endorsed by the board.