h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"A minute spent away from the kleyboard can save ten at the keyboard" - Basically it helps to plan programs on whiteboards and the back of beermats etc.to remove the temptation to just fire up the programming environment and start working away...that way leads to trouble.

Yeah. getting a good (working!) algorythm is essential (We are just learning this in Comp101)

If you don't know, an algorythm is basically a set of instructions written in plain (Sort of!) english.

Like: for a guessing game

Begin game
display instructions
pick a number between 1 and 100
repeat 7 times
ask "what's your guess"
if guess < number then say "Too small"
else if guess > number then say "Too big"
else say "You got it" and exit
end repeat
end game

Before implementing a belt and braces program,
make sure the user has trousers.