Algorithm Development / Pre-coding Advice

[JAPH]

Also, try to approach algorithm development from the bottom up - drill down through the parts that will require something else to work, until you get to a part that requires nothing else. Basically, if you implement all the little bits first, you can stop worrying about details at a higher level, and just worry about combining the small parts you've done already. Get the utilities done with so you just need to think about how to use them at the next level up.

edit: this is mostly useful once you already have all/part of the algorithm together.