Software development — AS & A Level Computer Science (9618) questions by topic
Explaining why an assignment statement using STR_TO_NUM produces a particular result type, justifying the need for different program development life cycles, and describing how an IDE helps trace an unexpected function return value are typical tasks in this topic, spanning 27 real questions from 2023 to 2025 papers and marks from 4 to 16.
Identify, explain, describe, state and complete lead the command words, and explain here means tracing cause through to the specific consequence in the given code, not a general statement about good practice. Because these questions often reference a snippet of code or a symbol in a diagram, drafting an answer and checking it against instant marking is a direct way to confirm the reasoning is tied to that exact detail.
May–June 2025, Paper 21
A program monitors the speed of vehicles as they move around a large building site. Each vehicle contains a sensor which reads an integer value that represents the speed of the…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2025, Paper 22
A program is being developed to control the production line in a factory. A number of different program life cycles are available for the development of a program. Explain the…
Answer this question and get it marked →A program to calculate the pay of employees working for a company is being designed. Stepwise refinement has been used in the design of the program. Describe stepwise refinement.
Answer this question and get it marked →An automated digital camera system is used to take a sequence of pictures of animals in a garden. During the design of the system, a state-transition diagram is produced. The…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2025, Paper 23
A programmer is developing a new stock control program for a shop owner to produce sales reports. A text file Sales.txt stores strings representing the number of items sold. The…
Answer this question and get it marked →Study the structure chart. The chart has a top module Main. Main calls SubA and SubB; the call to SubA or SubB is governed by a selection (diamond) symbol on the line from Main.…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2024, Paper 21
When an exercise class is planned, a new module will send personalised text messages to each member who has expressed an interest in that exercise. Members wishing to join the…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2024, Paper 22
The pseudocode contains two syntax errors and one other error. Identify the errors. Syntax error 1 .......................... Syntax error 2 .......................... Other error…
Answer this question and get it marked →Decomposition will be used to break the new module into sub-modules (sub-problems). Identify three sub-modules that could be used in the design and describe their use. Sub-module…
Answer this question and get it marked →Suggest a reason why the teacher's program has been split into a number of stages and give the benefit of producing a different file from each stage. Reason…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 12
A program is written in a high-level language by a team of three programmers using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Describe how the programmers can use the debugging…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 21
A program includes the following assignment statement: Result ← STRTONUM(x) / STRTONUM(y) When the program evaluates the expression in the statement, it performs a calculation.…
Answer this question and get it marked →A software developer follows a program development life cycle. The life cycle divides the development process into various stages. The following table lists some development…
Answer this question and get it marked →A program contains six modules with headers as follows: Pseudocode module header --- PROCEDURE Connect() FUNCTION Activate(H1 : STRING, Code : INTEGER) RETURNS BOOLEAN FUNCTION…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 22
The error in the program needs to be corrected. Identify the stage of the program development life cycle that this correction is made in.
Answer this question and get it marked →Run-time errors can be generated in different ways. For example, a run-time error will be generated if a function is called with invalid parameters. The pseudocode contains three…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 23
The following table lists some development activities. Complete the table by writing the name of the life cycle stage for each activity. Activity Name of life cycle stage --- ---…
Answer this question and get it marked →Identify the stage of the program development life cycle that this discussion is part of and give a document that will be produced during this stage. Stage…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 12
The developer is writing a new program library to be used by the other team members. Define the term program library.
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 21
A programmer has written a program which includes the function Calculate(). When the program is run, the function returns an unexpected value. Describe how a typical Integrated…
Answer this question and get it marked →Several companies are developing websites to market a new type of games console. The company that is first to create a website that can demonstrate the interactive features of the…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 22
A program calculates the postal cost based on the weight of the item and its destination. Calculations occur at various points in the program and these result in the choice of…
Answer this question and get it marked →A programmer has produced the following pseudocode to output the square root of the numbers from 1 to 10. Line numbers are for reference only. 10 DECLARE Num : REAL 11 Num ← 1.0…
Answer this question and get it marked →A computer system for a shop stores information about each customer. The items of information include name and address (both postal and email) together with payment details and…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 23
A program is designed, coded and compiled without errors. The compiled code is sent for testing. The program will be tested using the walkthrough method. Additional information…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2023, Paper 22
Complete the structure chart for these modules.
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2023, Paper 23
Explain the meaning of the curved arrow symbol which begins and ends at Module-A().
Answer this question and get it marked →Other AS & A Level Computer Science topics
- Programming (79)
- Data types and structures (74)
- Algorithm design and problem-solving (36)
- Information representation (31)
- Communication and internet technologies (29)
- Boolean algebra and logic circuits (29)
- Processor fundamentals (27)
- Hardware (18)
- System software (17)
- Security, privacy and integrity of data (13)
- Databases (13)
- Artificial intelligence (13)