Talk about the differences between structured English and Pseudo Code?
Differentiating between the two requires an explanation of how they work and what they are used for. Having used both in different environments, each comes with its own set of step-by-step procedures. There's a systematic, logical approach that is well-defined, which allows an intelligent system to solve a problem. On the other hand, Pseudocode is a simpler version of a programming code in plain English that uses short phrases to write code for a particular program before it is implemented into a specific programming language. I have used several types of programming languages and algorithms pseudocode to run what-if and if-then-else scenarios.
Let's begin with what structured English and Pseudo Code are. Structured English is the native English language. Its primary purpose is to write the structure of a program module. It uses programming language keywords to achieve this. On the other hand, Pseudo Code is like a programming language without the syntax of any specific language. This question can come in different forms, and each hiring manager will ask it differently, but essentially they are asking the same question. Pseudocode is a kind of structured English used for describing algorithms. It describes the entire logic of an algorithm so that when implementation happens, it is translated line by line into source code. Basically, this is an algorithm question that the hiring manager asks to see if you're old school and if you've written code in Lisp, FORTRAN, or C programming language. This tells the manager how you approach a project, whether it's task structured or methodology driven. Either is not a wrong answer, but you want to ask the interviewer what type of development organization they run early in the interview to answer accordingly.
"My approach is simple, I take an organized approach to how I write code, and the way I differentiate structured English, and Pseudo Code. First, I make a list of the main tasks that need to be accomplished. Then, I break them down into small manageable tasks that can be explained with a short phrase. It's been my experience that the further I dig into the correlation between pseudo-code and real code, I find that pseudo-code helps me plan the structure but doesn't help me resolve the real-world programming. In my opinion, that's really the bottom line difference in simple terms between the two. Since either is actual programming languages, they act as structured algorithms that can be used in a programming language."
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