The psychology of computer programming
The psychology of computer programming
Control flow and data structure documentation: two experiments
Communications of the ACM
Experimental investigations of the utility of detailed flowcharts in programming
Communications of the ACM
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
Program Development Process: The Individual Programmer
Program Development Process: The Individual Programmer
Schematic pseudocode for program constructs and its computer automation by SCHEMACODE
Communications of the ACM
SIGDOC '85 Proceedings of the 4th annual international conference on Systems documentation
Computer aided program design experiments: diagrammatic versus textual material
SIGCSE '89 Proceedings of the twentieth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
The design of a PDL environment
CSC '88 Proceedings of the 1988 ACM sixteenth annual conference on Computer science
Learning to program: spreadsheets, scripting and HCI
ACE '04 Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 30
Understanding the software paradox
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
A Framework for Empirical Evaluation of Model Comprehensibility
MISE '07 Proceedings of the International Workshop on Modeling in Software Engineering
Controversy Corner: On the relationship between comment update practices and Software Bugs
Journal of Systems and Software
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An experiment was performed to assess the relative merits of program design languages (PDLs) and flowcharts as techniques for the development and documentation of detailed designs for computer programs. The use of a PDL by a software designer, for the development and description of a detailed program design, produced better results than did the use of flowcharts. Specifically, the designs appeared to be of significantly better quality, involving more algorithmic or procedural detail, than those produced using flowcharts. In addition, flowchart designs exhibited considerably more abbreviation and other space-saving practices than did PDL designs, with a possible adverse effect on their readability. When equivalent, highly readable designs were presented to subjects in both PDL and flowchart form, no pattern of short-term or long-term differences in comprehension of the design was observed. No significant differences were detected in the quality or other properties of programs written as implementations of the designs. Subjective ratings indicated a mild preference for PDLs. Overall, the results suggest that software design performance and designer-programmer communication might be significantly improved by the adoption of informal PDLs rather than flowcharts as a standard documentation method for detailed computer program designs.