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A secret code is the perfect way to share notes with your friend, and nobody but them will understand them! This is a useful way to talk to your friends in class, stop your family reading your diary, or just showing off how smart you are!

Translation: A mixture of substituting and scrambling makes a good code.

[edit] Steps

Encrypt. Think of some things that you would like to have as written symbols. You can even use symbols from another language, like Russian, or a mix of symbols. If you're stuck for ideas, the font 'Wingdings', which is used in some forms of programming, is installed on most computers. You can get some symbols from that.
Scramble. Scrambling up the order of letters in each word makes it even harder to break the code. Its fairly simple to decode a simple substitution code, as any reader of the Artemis Fowl series will tell you. By scrambling the order of the letters you can confuse would be decoders. To scramble the letters, think of a pattern. The usual one is to switch the first and last letters of each word, so the word 'letter' would become 'rettel'. This will make your code all the more secret. Keep the pattern short and memorable, so that you friends can use it.
Match up the letters. Draw your code symbols for every letter of the alphabet, making each symbol correspond to a letter.
Practice. First, start writing words, then eventually sentences. The more you and your friends practice, the easier it will become to read your messages. After a while you'll begin to recognize individual word patterns and decipher them immediately as if you were reading English!
Extra for Experts. If you think you are skilled enough you can muddle up the alphabet itself. Write out the alphabet, and then randomly write another letter beside each one, without double ups. These letters will now replace the existing ones. So for instance, if B replaces T, F replaces H, and X replaces E, the word The would be written Bfx. This works best if you aren't using the symbol substitution. Using this method in combination with scrambling your words makes for a really unbreakable code.

[edit] Tips

Use easy to draw symbols, like dashes or simple shapes. The easier it is to draw the quicker you can write them.
Drafting your messages before encode them will result in a more grammatically correct message.
Shorten words into text language, so the word 'LOVE' would become 'EVOL' and then be put into symbols. This just shortens the writing process, and will confuse potential decoders.

[edit] Warnings

Don't use your codes to break the rules, ie send messages in class. If your teacher finds them you will be punished more than normal as they will be paranoid about what has been written.
This code is not the most reliable in the world. Don't expect professional agencies to be stumped by it. If you're that worried about the content of your messages, don't send them!