I remember in one of the classes I took in college we learned about an actual language for wireframing programs. I cant remember the name of it for the life of me but it was supposedly an industry standard way of writing out like all your functions and classes etc.
We occasionally use Axure or Balsamiq for doing front end wireframes, looking for something kinda like that to roadmap the backend code. We have a large dev project coming up and I want to make sure everything is nice a tidy so it's not a nightmare to update a year from now.
By wireframe, you mean plan the UI out? Paper + Pen, or Whiteboards. Code itself? I know with my friend, him and I will write things out and then go through it, clean it up and improve it, and finally finish the work on the PC.
When we wrote a forum scrapper we used Git branches, which is where we held new ideas and content that needed to be reviewed and then merged later.
No wireframing the UI is easy. Im looking for something to layout functions and classes etc. So for example the language thing I remember from college was something like:
C_accounts --PF_listAccounts (list all user accounts) --PF_createUser (create a new account) --PF_deleteUser (deletes an account)
In this language, it had specific ways of writing things, so like C_ means its a class, PF_ means its a public function, -- means that function is inside the above class, etc. It had its own syntax/convention if you will for laying out what functions were where, what they needed to to, etc. This allowed you to write out your entire program in a way that was quickly readable. That way when you go to actually code it in whatever language you are using you have a good idea of what needs to be where, and already have your basic comments written out.
I just made the above code up but you get the idea.
OMG yes that is what I have been trying to think of all day. UML. That was really bothering me.
Not sure that I will use it, but good to finally remember what it is. Still looking through different programs, whatever is easiest to work with. The cleaner the better. A downside to UML though is that while it might be easy for my team to pick up and read, the client wouldnt understand it.
I'm almost looking for something to wireframe out the actual logic of the code, something I can show to the client and be like OK this is how this works, this thing does that, etc.
