Repository for SNHU Programming Languages course under Dr. Marcello
Project Summary: The "GroceryTracker" program was developed to address Corner Grocer's need for analyzing text records of items purchased throughout the day. The project focused on determinine the purchase frequency of various items, thereby aiding the store in rearranging their produce section for optimized customer accessibility and experience.
Problem Being Solved: The main problem tackled by the program was to ascertain how often different items were purchased at the Corner Grocer. Through detailed analysis of the item purchase records, the program allows the store to strategically position their items in a manner that is most convient and intuitive for thier customers.
Self-Review What Was Done Well:
- Modularity and Readability: The code was structured into clear, distinct functions, ensuring that each logical operations was isolated and could be understood independently.
- User Experience: The UI is straightforward and instructive, fuiding the user through different functionalities without overwhelming them with complexity.
- Data Management: Utilization of rthe 'std::map' for storing and retreiving item data was effective, providing a balance of data management efficiency and simplicity.
Areas for Enchancement:
- Input Data Handling: The input data was handled with basic functionality, further optimization for larger datasets by utilizing advanced string and stream manipulations might enchance performance.
- User Interface: The console interface, while functional, could be further improved by implementing a graphical user interface (GUI) for more intuitive and visually pleasing user interactions.
- Additional Functionalities: More analytic functionalities, such as finding peak purchase times or correlating items that are frequently purchased together, could be introducted for more detailed insights.
Improvements in data handleing could lead to enhanced performance, especially with larger datasets, while a GUI and additional functionalities would enhance user experience and provide more detailed and actionalble insights to the store management.
Challenging Code Pieces Writing the histogram display function was somewhat challenging due to the need to balance readability and accurate representation of the data. Resources like C++ documentation, online forums (such as StackOverflow), and C++ programming books were essential in finding efficient and clean solutions for this.
Transferrable Skills
- Data Analysis: The skill of progammatically analyzing data to derive actionalble insights is widely applicable across various domains.
- Files I/O: The ability to write and read from files is crucial in various applications for data storage, retrieval, and backup.
- User Interaction and Input Validation: Ensuring a robust and user-friendly experience is vital in softwared development and applicable in various projects and coursework.
Maintaining the Code
- Modularity: The code was kept modular, with separate functions for each distinct functionality, ensuring ease of modification or extension.
- Commenting and Documentation: Through in-line commenting and comprehensive documentation, understanding and modifying the code by other developers is facilitated.
- Consistent Naming Conventions: Adopting a consistent and descriptive naming convention ensures that the variable and function purposes are evident, enhancing readability.
In essence, the "GroceryTracker" program enables the Corner Grocer to make data-driven decisions on store layout optimization by providing clear insignts into item purchase frequencies. This skills and methodologies adopted during its development are not only pertinent to this specific context but are also widely applicable in various other data analysis and software development scenarious.