3/22/2009
1
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Technology
Spring 2009
ENGR 1731
Computing for Engineers
Prof.Alba‐Flores
FlowchartsandPseudocode
An Algorithm is a well-defined procedure to solve a
problem.
An algorithm is a very useful tool that a programmer
uses to express the method that will be used to
solve a problem
Algorithms
solve
a
problem
.
Once that an algorithm is well defined, the
programmer can translate it directly to a specific
computer language.
Algorithms can be represented as flowcharts or/and
pseudocodes
Flowcharts and pseudocodes are also other useful tools
that are used to plan how a problem can be solve using a
programming language.
Flowcharts and poseudocodes are independent of the
il
FlowchartsandPseudocode
programm
i
ng
l
anguage .
If you have a good flowchart (or pseudocode) for a
given problem, it will be straightforward to implement that
flowchart ( or pseudocode) into a program in any
computing language.
A Flowcharts is a graphical approach to
create a coding plan.
A pseudocode is a verbal description of your
FlowchartsandPseudocode (cont.)
coding plan.
You may want to use either or both for your
programming projects
For simple programs, pseudocode may be the best
planning approach.
Example 1.
Suppose we want to create a program to convert mph
to ft/s. The output should be a complete table with a
title and column headings.
A
pseudocode
for this example could be:
A
pseudocode
for
this
example
could
be:
•Define the vector of mph values
•Convert mph to ft/s
•Combine the mph and ft/s vectors into an array
•Create a table title
•Create column headings
•Display the table
An equivalent flowchart planning could be:
