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I am a programmer by trade so in my English Class ENC 1102, when we were asked to come up with a discourse community in which we could relate the use of writing skills I thought about pseudocode and comments.

So the question is as follows: What effect does the utilization of psuedocode and comments have when a software engineer or programmer designs software?

I want to know how writing pseudocode and comments have had in your work process. Does it make it better, faster, worse? Share your experiences and opinions please.

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closed as too broad by Robert Harvey, Ross Patterson, user16764, gnat, amon Jan 15 at 12:58

There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
    
I don't use pseudocode, unless the algorithm is especially complex. I try not to use comments either, unless I have to clarify something to the future reader of my code. Comments are just one more thing to maintain, and they don't add functionality, fix bugs or reduce technical debt. –  Robert Harvey Jan 14 at 22:54
    
This is like asking about the effect a recipe has on a meal. –  James Jan 14 at 23:05
    
The first thing I think of when I consider where I use my writing skills is Documentation and effective communication of ideas (either to other programmers or clients). That's probably where writing skills are most important in programming. –  Rachel Jan 15 at 13:01
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Pseudo-code and comments are two very different things I think.

Pseudo-code I often put on the back of an envelope with a pencil. It also often has drawings and sketches with lines and arrows. It makes a huge difference in my productivity. It's like an outline. They you fill in the details later.

Comments I personally find that I spend most of my time maintaining my code as I work to improve it. Just let a year go by and then try and go back and fix something without any comments. So now I try to leave comments to allow me to quickly figure out the basics of what is going on in a section so I can quickly find the right section to fix or work on. I don't need to know every little detail, just where to get started and what it's trying to do.

But of course this is art and not science, or literature and not code. The distinction being is that if the color yellow works for you today, but not tomorrow, that is art, where to a scientist or engineer yellow is the same, day after day.

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