Most researchers differ in their workflow. For researchers in the algorithms world (or at least, those I know), the work is in the design. Our hours are spent at the blueprint stage. Algorithms are designed, improved, reformulated, or reapplied in different problems, mostly on paper. But this is unarguably only the first stage in successfully developing a new algorithm. There are still the matters of proving and testing the algorithm, and submitting the result to the public. When are we done drafting our blueprint? How do we package and ship the blueprint to the engineers and construction team?
Let’s address the more straight-forward question first. What is the best way to present an algorithm? How descriptive and specific should it be? Should it be entirely self-contained or, for instance, could we have a pointer to a “… subroutine of choice”? Is implementability more important than readability?