Structured Programming

[Michael J. Chinni, SMCAR-CCS-E]

> > What REALLY happens when a group of structured programmers tries to
> > develop a large program? Usually they argue about how the program should
> > be indented, what the comments should be like, how the subroutines
> > should be nested, ...  etc. 
> I wish I could give you some "war stories" about unstructured vs. structured
> programming, . . .

One "war story" I can relate is the following.  As an R&D computer facility we
serve as what you might call a "job shop" for engineers at our site. One time
an engineer came to us with a several thousand line program that he wanted
us to put on our system (i.e. get it working).  After accepting the job we
found to our horror the the code was TOTALLY unstructured.  It had NO comments;
had no conection what-so-ever between variable names and their use;
and frequently used system-specific code without mentioning that it was
system-specific OR what the code did; and the entire program was replete with
gotos.  

It took us about 2 man-months of work to get that monstrosity working.  However,
if the code had been "structured" it would have taken us no more that 2
man-weeks.

The moral of the story is that had the code been structured we would have saved
1.5 man-months of work. And since we charge by time spent on a job, it would
have saved much money.

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			    Michael J. Chinni
	US Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center
 User to skeleton sitting at cobweb    ()   Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey  
   and dust covered terminal and desk  ()   ARPA: mchinni at ardec.arpa
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