Question

I’m not a experienced programmer (yet), but I’m applying to a school that has several coding courses.

In the entrance examination however, there may be solvable problems that must be written in pseudocode or as flow charts. Somewhat I handle the flow charts, but I’m having a hard time making the pseudocode look good.

For example, I tried to write a pseudocode for a program that scans 24 temperature readings and prints out MIN, MAX and AVG, but I don’t think I did so well. I got this far, but didn’t get the AVG in:

 max = 0 min = 0 set up array of a[24] loop start    if  a[x] > max
        max = a[x]
        else if a[x] < min
        min = a[x]

 print Max temp: print Min temp:

I would like to see how you guys would construct a clear pseudocode of this program.

Answer 1

Smaller statements tend to be better. I’d rewrite your provided snippet as:

count = 24
temperatures is an array of count elements
max = -9999
min = 9999
total = 0

for each value in temperatures
    total = total + value
    if value > max
        max = value
    else if value < min
        min = value

print "Minimum: " min
print "Maximum: " max
print "Average: " total / count

It’s almost real python code. The following is real python code:

count = 24
temperatures = [3 * x for x in range(count)]
max = -9999
min = 9999
total = 0.0

for value in temperatures:
    total = total + value
    if value > max:
        max = value
    if value < min:
        min = value

print("Minimum: ", min)
print("Maximum: ", max)
print("Average: ", total / count)