Making Life Easier with Pseudo Code

  In basic terms, Pseudo Code is the english (or whatever) version of real code. Let's take a look at some Pseudo Code.

Getting started is
  the hard part as it requires that you have an idea that has been thought
  out. A word of advice is that you should never wait until you have 100%
  of your project worked out. If you do, you will most likely never start.
  For this article, we will design a simple program to emulate a Pay Phone.

The first step we
  need to take is designing and overall general program flow. A Pay Phone
  is pretty easy to do as it does not have much to it.

  

  

Pretty simple eh?
  Like I said, not much to a Pay Phone. So now we have an overall general
  view of what we need to do, let's get moving with the next step.

  

  wow, that's it?! Pretty much. Obviously, anyone who has ever worked with
  LCD's will know there are more steps involved in displaying the time on
  the screen, but that's the good part, and we will get to that later.

On the first line,
  we define a function. Anyone who reads this will be able to tell that
  the following will be inside of the "Wait for user" function.
  On the following line, you will see "Get Time". This tells the
  reader that the code for getting the time will go in that spot, before
  "Display Time On LCD". We continue writing the parts of the
  function that it will contain. Notice that it's easy to read compared
  to code? This is the power of Pseudo Code.

Using Pseudo Code,
  we have just created a template for our "Wait for user" function.
  This template will allow anyone to come back to it and fill it in with
  code of their choice.

"Take money"
  , "Take input"

  Every Pay Phone has to take money and input. The functions are (in a general
  breakdown) very simple.

  

These functions are
  pretty simple and are no different from our "Wait for user"
  function. These functions are simply templates for later code insertion.

"Make call"

  Our make call function will be a little bigger than the previous functions,
  let's dig in...

I just want to clarify
  that I am no phone technician and I know that there are many many more
  operations to a Pay Phone, but this is what we have for this article.
  Let's move on to the next section.

Now that you understand
  that Pseudo Code is crazy simple, let's get into some specifics. We will
  go back to our "Wait for user" function. We are going to modify
  it so that when you assign it to your programmer, he will understand exactly
  what you want.

You think I'm a crazy person
   who's toying with you now, don't ya?! I'm serious, this is how easy Pseudo
  Code can be. You can modify your Pseudo code to look as you like, just
  keep in mind the readability for others (if any at all).

The power of Pseudo
  Code can be from 0 to unlimited. It all depends on you and your methods.
  Pseudo Code can scale the ease of transition from Pseudo Code to Real
  Code depending on how you use it. If you use more programming language
  specific articles, you will have an easier time porting it into real code.
  In most cases, Pseudo Code can be directly replaced with code with little
  to no extra thinking.

  

  I hope this article has been helpful and I hope it helps you to write
  better code. By using Pseudo Code, it can help see issues that would normally
  not be seen by looking at real code since you are reading it in your native
  tongue.

  

  Check out more articles like this on Programmers-Unlimited.com.