Lesson plan

Program Design Language

Program Design Language (or PDL, for short) is a method for designing and documenting methods and procedures in software. It is related to pseudocode, but unlike pseudocode, it is written in plain language without any terms that could suggest the use of any programming language or library. PDL was originally developed by the company Caine, Farber & Gordon and has been modified substantially since they published their initial paper on it in 1975. It has been described in some detail by Steve McConnell in his book Code Complete.

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Article summary

Program Design Language (or PDL, for short) is a method for designing and documenting methods and procedures in software. It is related to pseudocode, but unlike pseudocode, it is written in plain language without any terms that could suggest the use of any programming language or library. PDL was originally developed by the company Caine, Farber & Gordon and has been modified substantially since they published their initial paper on it in 1975. It has been described in some detail by Steve McConnell in his book Code Complete.

Key claims

  1. publication date: 1975 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the publication date is "1975". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1347293924

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.