I think you're right that it's basically outlining.
As a practice, it started for me when I first started working on writing some literate code. I would basically write a paragraph about what the function should do, then write up the function definition, then move on to the next program.
It has definitely made my code more coherent and feels like a necessity for anything more than a few hundred lines.
Lots of stuff I write I still just dive in and code because it's "obviously" simple. Sometimes that simple problem grows into a mess of 1k+ LoC, sometimes not.
As a practice, it started for me when I first started working on writing some literate code. I would basically write a paragraph about what the function should do, then write up the function definition, then move on to the next program.
It has definitely made my code more coherent and feels like a necessity for anything more than a few hundred lines.
Lots of stuff I write I still just dive in and code because it's "obviously" simple. Sometimes that simple problem grows into a mess of 1k+ LoC, sometimes not.