Completing and Testing Your Project

You've built conversion functions, a user interface, input validation, and error handling. Now it's time to assemble everything into a complete, polished program and test it thoroughly.

Assembling the Complete Program

Organize your code in a logical order:

Imports (if any) at the top
Conversion functions — the core logic
Validation functions — input helpers
UI functions — menu and display
Main program — the entry point

This organization makes code easy to navigate. Anyone reading it understands the structure at a glance.

The Complete Structure

Your final file might look like:

# converter.py

# Conversion functions
def decimal_to_binary(n):
    """Convert decimal to binary string."""
    return bin(n)[2:]

# ... other conversion functions

# Validation functions
def get_decimal_input():
    """Get and validate decimal input from user."""
    # ... validation logic

# ... other validation functions

# UI functions
def show_menu():
    """Display menu and get user choice."""
    # ... menu logic

# Main program
def main():
    """Run the number base converter."""
    print("Welcome to the Number Base Converter!")
    while True:
        # ... main loop logic

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The if __name__ == "__main__": pattern lets your code be imported as a module without running automatically.

Testing Checklist

Work through these tests systematically:

Happy path tests — Normal usage:

Convert 42 decimal to binary (expect 101010)
Convert 101010 binary to decimal (expect 42)
Convert 255 decimal to hex (expect FF)

Edge cases:

Convert 0 (should work in all bases)
Convert 1 (smallest positive number)
Very large numbers like 1000000

Invalid input:

Letters when expecting numbers
Invalid characters for each base
Empty input
Menu choices outside 1-5

Boundary conditions:

What happens with negative numbers?
Leading zeros in input?

Fixing Bugs

When tests reveal problems, debug systematically:

Reproduce the exact problem
Identify which function fails
Add print statements to trace values
Fix the issue
Test again

Don't move on until each test passes.

Committing Your Work

With everything working, commit to Git:

git add converter.py
git commit -m "Complete number base converter with validation and error handling"

This saves your working state. If future changes break something, you can always return here.

Celebrate!

You've built a complete, working program from scratch. It handles user input, performs calculations, validates data, and recovers from errors. That's real software development.

Take a moment to appreciate what you've accomplished. Then get ready to share your work with the world.

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