Implementing Core Features

What You Will Learn in This Lesson

By the end of this lesson, you will know:

• Core features: Essential functionality your project needs.
• Implementation strategy: How to build features step by step.
• Using functions: Breaking code into manageable pieces.
• Testing as you go: Verifying features work before moving on.
• Building incrementally: Adding features one at a time.

What Are Core Features?

Core features are the essential functions that make your project work. These are the must-have features from your proposal—the ones that define what your project does.

# Core Features (Must Have):
1. Add task
2. View tasks
3. Mark task complete
4. Save to file

# Nice-to-Have (Later):
- Task categories
- Due dates
- Priority levels
- Search functionality

Implementation Strategy

Build features systematically:

Using Functions Effectively

Break your code into functions:

# Each core feature becomes a function
def add_task(tasks, task_name):
    """Add a new task to the list."""
    tasks.append({"name": task_name, "completed": False})
    return tasks

def view_tasks(tasks):
    """Display all tasks."""
    for i, task in enumerate(tasks, 1):
        status = "✓" if task["completed"] else " "
        print(f"{i}. [{status}] {task['name']}")

def mark_complete(tasks, task_number):
    """Mark a task as complete."""
    if 1 <= task_number <= len(tasks):
        tasks[task_number - 1]["completed"] = True
    return tasks

Summary

In this lesson, you learned:

• Core features: Essential functionality your project needs
• Strategy: Start simple, test each feature, build incrementally
• Functions: Break code into manageable, reusable pieces
• Testing: Verify features work before moving on