>upfront designing their programs instead of just jumping in. >This has taught me the lesson to always first try and think things through and come up with some

>upfront designing their programs instead of just jumping in. >This has taught me the lesson to always first try and think things through and come up with some kind of initial design, instead of just jumping in and writing code blindly. 100% One of my favorite techniques is "Super Pseudo Code" ! Why SUPER ? Lol cause the "pseudo code" I write can barley be called "code at all" - It is usually just a text-file with a bunch of loosey-goosey-function-calls and parameters. You know just to get a "feel" for how different entities(classes,struct,tables or libs - pick your poison) will interact and what might be needed. We not talking any UML-Diagrams here - really just text-files and functions/entities This also works super-well for any multi-step-processes.