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From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: FLOW | FLAW charts ??
Message-ID: <313@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Sep-83 01:13:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.313
Posted: Thu Sep 15 01:13:26 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Sep-83 20:37:19 EDT
References: ihuxr.631, <1165@ecsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus
Lines: 14

In my opinion, FL*W charts are useful for only one thing:

	Explaining to management what it is your program does.

The reason they are useful for this is that any moron, no matter
how inept or untrained, can understand a fl*w chart.  Not to imply
that all managers are morons, but many of them have little or no
technical training or understanding of what's going on.  (I do not
prepare fl*wcharts for my current management, nor have I ever.  But
some people must.)

It has been shown several times that fl*wcharts are worthless as a
design aid.  I believe there was a well done experimental human factors
paper in CACM a couple years back, for instance.