[warrenm]

in nearly all my 100- and 200-level programming classes 20+ years ago, we had to hand-in a pseudocode for our assignment before our assignment

It didn't have to be completely correct, but it did need to be directionally correct (or, at least illustrate a way of solving the problem, even if we ended-up doing it differently)

I poo-pooed those, and would only create my pseudocode after writing my program - I'd already "been programming" for close to a decade, so why go through the 'pointless exercise' (as I thought at the time) of designing a solution only to have to implement the solution?!

Then I left those intro classes and we started getting more-interesting assignments

All of a sudden, having a plan - even a very simple block diagram, or set of bullet points, etc - became vital to solving the problem

I don't know that I'd tell someone to fully pseudocode their solution before implementing something today ... but blocking it out, getting the high- and medium-level logic/parts drawn-out/written-down is most definitely vital to having a chance at a successful implementation