OSS & Pseudocode: The Big Heist with C

There is a myth that tutorial sessions (the so-called OSS - Group Advisory Meetings) exist to clear things up. For 5 weeks now, however, we have been living the exact opposite: The Methodology Multiverse.

We started out to learn Pseudocode and ended up losing our sanity, our bearings, and our pointers. But the cherry on top? The grand revelation regarding the final exam.

The Multiple Solutions Syndrome

The problem isn't that we don't understand. The problem is that we understand many different things.

• Week 1: "Always perform Top-Down analysis."
• Week 3: "You don't need Top-Down here, just keep it simple."
• Week 5: "Why didn't you use Top-Down? The exercise gets a zero."

It's like asking 5 different Senior Devs how to center a div and getting 5 different answers, but in the end, having to combine them all into one solution that runs on paper.

The "Plot Twist" of C Language

And here comes the absolute joke of the situation. For 5 weeks we "bleed" over Pseudocode. We learn to write Όσο, Γράψε, Διάβασε with the reverence of a religious text. We analyze solution methodologies that resemble philosophy.

And suddenly, we realize the bitter truth: We are not examined in Pseudocode.

All this methodology, the flowcharts, and the Greek commands must suddenly become printf, scanf, and pointers, without syntax highlighting and without a compiler to save us.

Coding the Confusion

If I tried to write an algorithm describing our situation, it would be this Frankenstein code (half Pseudocode, half C):

// Program: EAP_Reality_Check
// Purpose: To pass the course without a stroke
 
#include <confusion.h>
 
void main() {
    int sanity = 100;
    bool confused = true;
 
    // Here begins the confusion
    While (sanity > 0) repeat {
        
        printf("Teaching Pseudocode...\n");
        
        if (Exams_Approaching) {
            // Panic Switch
            printf("Surprise! Now write it in C!\n");
            sanity -= 50;
            
            // Syntax Error: Greek inside C logic
            Write("Segmentation Fault in my brain");
        }
        
        sanity--;
    }
}

So, what do we do?

The truth is one: In programming (and especially at HOU), the solution is often a matter of interpretation. I have concluded that the goal is not to solve the problem optimally, but to manage the mental translation from Greek to today's C.

Until then, we continue to write a chimera-code: It thinks like Python, names variables in Greeklish (timi_temaxiou), we speak Greek in printf (or is it ΤΥΠΩΣΕ, I got confused again) and hope it compiles either in ANSI C, or in the saving Web Interpreter I built to avoid the asylum.