I finally got why my old coding teacher kept pushing pseudocode

Last week I was helping my cousin with his first Python script and he just jumped straight into writing loops. I started explaining how I used to do pseudocode first back in 2019 when I was learning and he looked at me like I was speaking a different language. It got me thinking about that old community college teacher in Dayton who made us write out every step before touching a keyboard. I used to hate it, thought it was a waste of time. Now after 4 years of breaking projects in the middle of the night I get why she pushed it so hard. Has anyone else found that old habits you ignored as a beginner ended up being the most useful later?

3 comments

3 Comments

paul25127d ago

Man, pseudocode saved my bacon on a group project once when the internet went down for three days.

zara57227d ago

i mean, is pseudocode really that serious though? like yeah i get the idea, writing stuff out first can help sometimes, but i've never had a situation where not doing it broke my entire project. half the time i skip straight to coding and figure it out as i go, and my stuff works fine. maybe it helps some people, but acting like it's this life saving skill feels a bit much. your internet going down for three days sounds like a separate problem honestly lol.

laura_wright18d ago

Yeah, I'm with @zara572 on this one. Pseudocode feels like an extra step that just slows you down. If you know what you're doing, just code it.