The What and Why of Pseudocode

[MUSIC] 0:00 Hi, I'm Reggie Williams. 0:09 I hope you've enjoyed your learning so far and are prepared to continue your journey. 0:10 In this workshop, I'll teach you how to write something called pseudocode. 0:14 Pseudocode will help you plan your projects ahead, communicate your ideas to 0:17 teammates, and help you identify logical errors before you write any code. 0:20 Programs contain both logic and syntax. 0:25 Logic is the order in which the program runs, the decisions made within 0:28 the program, and how you structure the different parts of the program. 0:31 Syntax is the actual programming language, the very specific set of words and 0:35 symbols you write to make the program work. 0:39 Each language has its own specific syntax. 0:42 So to create a variable in JavaScript, you write something like this. 0:45 But in C#, it would look like this. 0:48 Both lines of code do the same thing, 0:50 store the value zero into a variable named score. 0:52 The syntax is different, but the logic is the same in both cases. 0:55 Thinking through the logic of a program is often the biggest challenge in 0:59 creating a program. 1:02 And fortunately, using pseudocode, 1:03 you can easily lay out your program's logic before coding. 1:05 Pseudocode is a notation that resembles plain speech to describe the logic of 1:09 your program. 1:12 Here's an example of pseudocode that describes a college admissions program. 1:13 You can see it reads very much like English, no programming syntax required. 1:17 For example, some lines start with verbs like set, input, and output. 1:21 These might be the actions or functions in the program. 1:25 Questions that may lead to different paths or 1:29 conditions begin with words like else or if. 1:32 Keep in mind that pseudocode is meant for humans, not computers. 1:35 It's not real code and won't run on a computer. 1:39 But it does help you describe how the program will run. 1:41 Pseudocode can also be used as comments to document your code. 1:44 One of my favorite practices is writing pseudocode in the text editor as comments 1:48 and then writing my code directly under each line. 1:51 In the next video, I'll teach you some of the basics of writing pseudocode. 1:55