A way of designing programs by writing rough drafts in a combination
of English and C++.
helper function:
Often a small function that does not do anything enormously useful by
itself, but which helps another, more useful, function.
top-down design:
A method of program development that uses pseudocode to sketch
solutions to large problems and design the interfaces of helper
functions.
mergesort:
An algorithm for sorting a collection of values. Mergesort is faster
than the simple algorithm in the previous chapter, especially for
large collections.