Designing Programs – Unleashing Pseudocode and Flowcharts

Believe it or not, a quality program requires a design. Not designing a program is a lot like driving to work without knowing where you’re going. This is something that is often overlooked by inexperienced programmers and, especially, PLC programmers. To ensure you have a quality, efficient program on your hands, you need to design the algorithm before you even think about touching a keyboard.

Much like an electrical engineer would never start building a circuit without creating a diagram, a programmer should never start writing a program before at least a rough design is implemented. A program design is a lot like a roadmap for the programmer. Similar to the way a map will save a driver many hours of driving around aimlessly, a program design will save a programmer countless hours of trial and error, as well as provide documentation that other developers can follow should they also contribute to the project...