Single-key teletype?

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{shortvrb}
\MakeShortVerb|
\begin{document}

this |and| that or |the other|

\end{document}

shortvrb is in the core base latex distribution.

Use fancyvrb and \DefineShortVerb (although you might not want to use `)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancyvrb}
\DefineShortVerb\`
\begin{document}
I'm writing a document with a ton of pseudocode and it's very tedious to keep wrapping code objects in
`{\tt text}`. It would be so much nicer to, well, do what StackExchange does! There's a one-character
symbol, the back-tick, just like for math there's the dollar-sign. Is there any way to accomplish the same
thing in LaTeX?
\end{document}

Wat StackExchange does is markdown, so you can also use the markdown package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{markdown}
\begin{document}
\begin{markdown}
This `and` that or `the other` 
\end{markdown}
\end{document}

Or more simple, write a markdown file and export it to LaTeX:

This `and` that or `the other` 

The bonus point of this approach is avoid also many other tedious commands, not only those for verbatim text.