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Use of structured flowcharts in the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum

Authors:

R. E. Haskell,

D. E. Boddy,

G. A. JacksonAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '76: Proceedings of the sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 67 - 74

https://doi.org/10.1145/800144.804758

Published: 01 July 1976 Publication History

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Abstract

Over the last four years a new Computer Science major program has been introduced into the curriculum of the School of Engineering at Oakland University. During this period computer science educators throughout the country have debated the best way to introduce structured programming into the curriculum. There is now a widespread belief that beginning FORTRAN courses cannot be taught using structured programming in a form that is palatable to freshmen students without the aid of a structured FORTRAN preprocessor. Our experience in teaching structured programming using FORTRAN to large numbers of freshmen students has indicated that this widespread belief is false.

We will illustrate the use of structured flowcharts with FORTRAN in Section 2 by showing one of the actual programming assignments that was given to our freshman introductory computer course this term. The same structured flowcharting techniques are used throughout the curriculum. An example that uses ALGOL and is taken from our junior level data structures class is given in Section 3. The use of the structured flowcharts forces all programs to be well-structured and encourages a top-down approach to programming. It is a very useful vehicle for describing any language-independent structured algorithm. An example of using structured flowcharts to describe a simple precedence parser in a senior course on compilers is given in Section 4.

References

[1]

I. Nassi and B. Shneiderman, "Flowchart techniques for structured programming;" SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 8, pp. 12-26, Aug. 1973.

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[2]

L. E. Gales, "Structured FORTRAN with no preprocessor," SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 10, pp. 17-24, Oct. 1975.

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[3]

D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Mass, 1969.

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[4]

M. Elson, Data Structures, SRA, Chicago, Ill., 1975.

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[5]

D. Gries, Compiler Construction for Digital Computers, John Wiley and Sons, 1971, p. 112.

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Lindsey C(1977)Structure charts a structured alternative to flowchartsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/956641.95664512:11(36-49)Online publication date: 1-Nov-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/956641.956645
Dickson PRichards TBecker BMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Experiences Implementing and Utilizing a Notional Machine in the ClassroomProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499320(850-856)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499320
Van Zadelhoff BRahimi EBarendsen E(2021)Principles to facilitate design-based learning environments for programming in secondary education while making learning visible in an authentic wayProceedings of the 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3488042.3488067(1-10)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3488067
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Index Terms

Use of structured flowcharts in the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula

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Published In

SIGCSE '76: Proceedings of the sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

September 1976

154 pages

ISBN:9781450374453

DOI:10.1145/800144

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 8, Issue 3
Proceedings of the 6th SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education
July 1976
146 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/952991
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 01 July 1976

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Lindsey C(1977)Structure charts a structured alternative to flowchartsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/956641.95664512:11(36-49)Online publication date: 1-Nov-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/956641.956645
Dickson PRichards TBecker BMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Experiences Implementing and Utilizing a Notional Machine in the ClassroomProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499320(850-856)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499320
Van Zadelhoff BRahimi EBarendsen E(2021)Principles to facilitate design-based learning environments for programming in secondary education while making learning visible in an authentic wayProceedings of the 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3488042.3488067(1-10)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488042.3488067
Jackson G(1979)Two-dimensional grammars and structured programming languagesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/954063.95406614:2(21-28)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/954063.954066

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