Neither comes first. In any application more complex that a "hello world" exercise, the first stage - and the most important - is the analysis. Define what the application has to do. Make sure you have a limit on the overall scope.

An important part of the design process is process modelling (or use case analysis if you are a troe object orientated person). This should identify the key data elements, and how they are used in all areas of your application. You may then want into somedata modelling - at a logical level first, then a physical data model. If you are using a relational database, this is often done using an E-R modelling tool - an Entity Relationship model.

Finally, design the various code sections to implement your process model and to interface with your (physical) data model.

As a rule of thumb, expect coding to take about 10% (the final 10% before testing) of the total project time.

In reply to Re: OT: Data Structure First or Code First? by Maclir
in thread OT: Data Structure First or Code First? by jerrygarciuh

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.