Reflective Essay for Data Structure and File Management Project

Reflective Essay on Data Structure and File Management Coursework

C++ is an object-oriented, low-level ANSI and ISO standard programming language that

can generate very efficient and very fast programs. As an object-oriented language large-

scale programs C++ is one of the most popular programming.

Initially when the project was given my first reaction was how will I be able integrate my

limited programming knowledge of C++ and fact that it was done in the reverse of me

currently doing C programming. This would however cause a conflict of interest that I

will not confuse the programming languages and I would have to do adequate research

and revisiting my notes on C++.

Given the draft of how the program will be coded, according to the task allotted to me

(calculating salary) the first challenge faced was when the hours worked is entered

an error check was needed to check the validity of the hours entered. An error check

was implemented in the function to calculate payroll when hours worked was entered.

Whenever an error occurs the system will return an error message and prompt the user

to reenter the hours worked according to the outlined criteria. After reentering the hours

worked again a display was done and the gross pay and other calculations were not

seen. However after many error checks and tests the decision was made to insert a new

function called calcpay to calculate the salary while the payroll function was used to

insert the hours worked and check for errors.

Another occurrence of challenge that was face when programming the system is that

the backup of the system was not writing to the file. This was because the writing of

the “payroll.dat” was done when the system close (exit) and the backup was before the

calling of the function to calculate payroll. The decision was made to merge the Backup

and Store function in one “Case” in the switch so that while the system will be saving