[prog] pseudocode

Jacinta Richardson jarich at perltraining.com.au
Thu Jul 28 16:11:35 EST 2005


When I was taught how to write pseudocode I was told that the point was not to
write high level abstractions of the idea at hand (such as "create an
associative array to populate this drop down menu") but rather to write out the
code in a way that any programmer of any applicable language should be able to
translate my code, roughly line-by-line into something that works.

I say "applicable" language because obviously if I write imperative pseudocode
then it won't translate so nicely into functional and declarative programming
languages.  Likewise OO pseudocode won't translate as well into an imperative
language.

Rather than try to come up with a bunch of good examples, I'll point to you a
really good resource:

http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/pdl_std.html

Remember, the point of writing pseudocode is to allow implementation in any
language.  Not to merely list what kind of things need to be done.  (Outside of
textbooks) pseudocode is most commonly used in design documents to allow the
implementing team flexibility in what language they use.

I hope this helps.

	J

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