11 replies to this topic

[relapse]

What methods do you use to plan out your programs? Psuedocode is nice but a complete waste of ******* time. Writing down some basic structures seem to help though. What methods do you use? What is popular methods?

[WingedPanther]

It depends a lot on what I'm doing. Generally, I've found that having a functional and technical spec goes a LONG ways towards helping me out. Rather than focus on the details of what I'll do, define the behaviors that are expected, including screen mockups, input/output pairs, etc. I mainly use tech specs when I'll be using a database backend, or have tricky bits of logic/SQL that I need to document.

[marwex89]

I use good ol' pen + paper, as I don't have a fancy whiteboard... I also write long text documents on wtf I'm going to make.

[relapse]

A whiteboard would be convenient. I bet people throw out old ones all the time.

[BlaineSch]

I am with marwex! I just grab a pencil and paper, draw some stuff out, diagram a bit of functionality and the such.

Mainly I just make websites though, since that is my job. Most of what I do is ... well not "repeatitive" but it does not differ much between user. You have pages, pages store, pages output, blah blah blah.

If something new came along back to pen and paper!

My keyboard squeaks when I type....

[sdavis2702]

Well, I'm a noob. I use Pseudocode. Then again, I just learned pseudocode and I don't know very many languages yet lol. Pseudocode did help me write my first little PHP script, though.

[marwex89]

Pseudocode has its usage too. It's nice for getting down details. For planning classes and program organization etc. it sucks though.

[BlaineSch]

Pseudocode is a very handy thing!

I never used it however, it was around the 4th 'language' I was introducted to, thus being a very big time waster, if I would have learned it first it would be better. My pseudocode ends up looking exactly like PHP or Java...

Edit: Grr Marwex you beat me!

[WingedPanther]

UML can also be useful when doing planning with OOP.

[sdavis2702]

BlaineSch you're right... it's much better learning it before you ever program. One thing I am noticing more an dmore each day is that there's a lot of logic behind this stuff (duh). But I mean... you really have to understand what you're trying to do in order to get it done properly. Pseudocode, flowcharts, hierarchies... all of that is still helpful to me right now. I can EASILY see myself dropping it soon. However, whenever I hit that beginner's brick wall and twist myself up like a pretzel, those little helpers get me back straight.

[Christopher87]

I'm still looking for an easily accessible planning method that fits both small projects and large projects. Some projects are so small that I don't want to spend a lot of time writing up documentation when I could probably scribble the solution on paper.

I guess I'm looking for something where I know my logic is correct for the ideas that I have. I suspect it is true that psuedo-code and dry runs are the best option for small projects. If my mind can step through the code, the computer should be able to as well.