Okay, my programming class has supplied us with quick reference charts with flowcharting and pseudocoding for writing simple programs using:

a mainLoop() module
a housekeeping() module
and a finishUp() module

Those things are simple to remember, but the contents of each module, and what is done in each, and in what order are not so simple to remember. I'm 26 years old, and I already feel like a Auld Bastard trying to come up with memory aids. It's kind of embarrassing when I place a print command or a close file command in my mainLoop() module, instead of the finishUp() module.

Has anyone else been thru an intro to programming class, that perhaps had some sort of memory aid for remembering the contents and order of procedures in modules? I did a C++ class back in 1999, and had no problem remembering anything, but now that I'm older and back in class, after 8 years of updates to the subject matter (When the fuck did C++ become object-oriented, rather than procedural?!), it's becoming more difficult to remember things.

If anyone needs more information about the material I'm talking about, I'll happily supply it. Please help this dumb ass remember the shit...

I'm too old for most of that.

Doesn't that vary by site? I know of nothing that says you HAVE to do things in certain segments except site standards. Shoot, I hated COBOL because to me it was so topheavy having to define the OS your program runs on, the hardware, etc before you could even start to define your variable pool.

I've done C++, as well as hobbling together some new .Net stuff, but no one tells me how to organize what I do, it's my stuff.

This class is pretty much just a general overview of programming logic, rather than focusing on one particular language. I was just wondering if anyone has found an easy way, to remember large amounts of information without having to write it down. Perhaps some sort of memory exercise. We pretty much have weekly tests using modules that are structured a certain way, and I've only had trouble with last week's test, since we had to pseudocde an entire program from memory. I'm doing great (91% being my lowest test score in 8 weeks) but I don't want to screw crap up in the last 4 weeks of the class.

The funny thing is - the best way for me to remember stuff IS to write it down. I'd take tons of lecture notes, and then hardly ever look at them again.

And speaking of writing stuff - do you ever get to implement this pseudo-code? That might be a good exercise. For me, I'd write it in C++

I'm more of a models/computation guy, so the stuff I write is very concrete.

I guess I'd think in these terms (for any class):
- Housekeeping upon entry
Get data into my class
Allocate memory to store the data

- Data manipulation
Perform calculation
Allocate memory to store 'results'

- Output results

- Clean-up (more housekeeping)

The nice part of C++ is that the constructor handles housekeeping-on-input, and the destructor, housekeeping-on-exit (from the class)

Good luck with all this...