Programming has come a long way from the mid-20th century when people produced programs in machine code or binary, the only language that computers understand. Today most programs are written in high level languages, which have more in common with natural language than machine code.

Many modern high-level programming languages such as Visual Basic and Delphi are event-driven. These languages have a rich visual interface and respond to events such as clicking a button, selecting an item from a list box and tabbing out of a text box, in contrast to non-visual languages where the user normally interacts with the program only through the keyboard.

You will be familiar with the Graphical User Interface (GUI) associated with event-driven programs. You make use of it all the time when using the operating system or application programs such as word processing and spreadsheets. You will learn how to set the properties of objects such as forms, combo boxes and buttons.

Some commercial programs are extremely complex, taking hundreds of people many months, or even years, to produce. However, the essential features of a programming language do not take too long to learn. In this unit, you will learn how to write reasonably complex programs in a visual event-driven language such as Visual Basic, Visual C++ or Delphi.

You will learn that there are a number of stages involved in program development including a clear program specification stating what the client requires the program to do, design, coding of the program itself, testing, documentation for both the client and for other programmers and, finally, evaluation to see if the program meets the requirements of the client and to assess the efficiency of the implementation.

Your work for this unit will culminate in the development, testing, documentation and evaluation of one or more programs to meet specified client requirements.

© Edexcel

Marking Criteria	Strand (a)	Strand (b)	Strand (c)	Strand (d)	Strand (e)
Coursework	Grange Golf and Leisure Club	Evidence for each strand
Deadlines	22nd February	1st April	19th April	30th April	30th April
Programming Examples	Example eportfolio (C grade)