flowcharts and teaching programming/was Re: Barden programming books

On 28 Feb 2010 at 8:48, Russ Bartlett wrote: That was never explicitly stated in FORTRAN 66, although the standard seemed to imply this--and many vendors chose to implement a test for zero iterations. Others simply took the idea that a DO was a bottom increment and test (i.e. do....while()). The zero-iteration test became the standard in F77 and has been so ever since--long before the idea of JSP was even a twinkling in its originators' eyes, so I don't quite get your point. Subsequent versions of FORTRAN (or Fortran, since we're talking about F90 and later) included while... and until... forms of iteration. In general, my point was that there is nothing in any language that bars horrible programming practices and that the larger the language, the more opportunity for abuse exists. Certainly, you've run into PERFORM paragraph-name... varations that would curl one's hair. COBOL is particularly nasty in this respect because one can either PERFORM a paragraph or paragraphs remotely or fall through into them, with completely different results. I spent several years in the early 70's maintaining a COBOL compiler and inter-dialect translator for a very large military project with its army of GSA programmers. More so than in any language I've ever run into, many problem reports were the result of the user not knowing the language and much time was spent on problem reports reciting chapter and verse from the standard. I think early thought about language extensions and features came can't I do it in <fill in your favorite language>?" And I feel that the viewpoint made sense in that lost microseconds were expensive and machines were slow. Best regards, Chuck