Top-Down Structured Programming Techniques

By Clement L. McGowan

First Edition, Hardcover. A reference and guide for the professional computer programmer. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0884053040
• ISBN13: 9780884053040
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Petrocelli/Charter
• Length: 288 Pages

Customer Reviews

Basics of designing programs

This is an old book (published in the mid-1970's) but it has many timeless concepts that are still valid today. In fact, many of the sound design principles in this book are ignored or assumed to already have been mastered by more modern books. This is a shame, because a firm grasp of the basics is important in becoming a good programmer. This book basically explains how to design programs well. Chapters 2 and 3 are the meat and potatoes of the book. In chapter 2 the authors explain DO-WHILE loops and give some guidelines for when to use them, and how to use them properly. Then in chapter 3 after explaining why the GOTO statement is bad, the authors explain that all programs can be written with three basic techniques (which they explain with flowcharts): 1.) simple sequences of statements, 2.) the IF-THEN-ELSE statement (which selects a statement based on a test), and 3.) the previously mentioned DO-WHILE statement (conditional iteration). Other statements such as the CASE statement (which is a generalization of IF-THEN-ELSE) are mentioned later. By constantly refining the program specs (function) into one of these three basic forms, and checking your work with a series of 'correctness questions' (which are given), the function can be refined down into a working program. Chapter 5 discuss a very interesting model for software development that was created some time ago by IBM: the Chief Programmer Team (CPT). This strategy was used successfully in large scale projects such as SkyLab. Basically you have a Chief (senior) Programmer who is the architect. This person designs the overall system and then turns portions of it over to backup programmers who code individual sections. The clerical tasks of the project are then handled by a 'librarian'; today this would be a technical writer who would prepare documentation as the project progresses, along with a tool such as CVS or Subversion to check in changes to code. It is a top-down design (hence the reason it is covered in this book), meaning that higher level modules in the system are integrated and tested before they can call a lower level module. I came to read this book after asking a co-worker (who is a good programmer) what books she would recommend in order to go back and review solid programming fundamentals. She gave me this book along with some others, and I felt it did the job well. Due to the age of this book you won't find any coverage of object oriented programming here, but you will find good coverage of the basics. Recommended.