A Concise Introduction to Programming in Python

Chapter 7

Algorithm Design and Debugging

Developing Algorithms

As the problems we tackle become more complex, it becomes harder to quickly

write out programs to solve them, and we need to devote correspondingly more

time to planning and designing solutions as opposed to writing code. At this

stage, the difficulty is generally in designing an algorithm capable of solving

the problem.

An algorithm is just a specific sequence of steps that will solve some problem.

Prior to writing code, programmers often use pseudocode, which is a hybrid

of English (or other language) and programming code. Thinking in pseudocode

allows you to focus on how to solve the problem ...