61
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
I am the author of the article. The point is to simplify the model of computation, not to match flow charts.
This is for mixed-ability 12 year olds, and when I say mixed, I mean some still add single ...
- 617
17
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
Why do you learn about bits and bytes if modern languages, with good reason, abstract from it? Why do we learn to program in assembler if modern languages, for good reason, abstract from it? Why do we ...
12
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
Don't teach it if you want Programmers (know what they're doing). Do teach it if you want Computer Scientists (know why they're doing it).
Obviously these two aren't mutually exclusive, but plenty of ...
- 219
10
votes
Accepted
Pseudocode or Flowcharts?
Neither is always better, and both have their strengths.
The idea of scoring higher marks as a criteria for better is going to be unpredictable without knowing who is granting those marks. Someone ...
- 5,435
9
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
I teach them within assembly code. Otherwise, I mention them within my Java class when I teach their modern-day analogues, break and ...
- 32.9k
9
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
I think the goto is sorely maligned. When Edsger Dijkstra wrote his famous letter in 1968, high level languages were not the same as they are today, and the ...
- 191
6
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
Flowcharts are a useful tool to understand programs that perform moderately complex sequences of interactions. They aren't always a good way to describe an algorithm, but they are a good way to ...
5
votes
Accepted
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
If you are teaching assembly code or maybe Fortran then probably you need to discuss goto and possibly flow charts. However, if you are teaching a modern high level ...
- 36k
4
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
The real question here seems more like when should you teach goto rather than if you should teach it.
The first example programs should certainly not be looking ...
- 1,652
4
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
I teach a college level introductory computer science course, where the primary goal is to learn programming in Java with no assumed prior programming experience.
I do teach flow charting when I ...
- 414
3
votes
Pseudocode or Flowcharts?
The other answers are already spot-on, but I wanted to offer another way to think about it...
My question is this: which is better for planning a set of algorithms: pseudocode or flow charts?
...
- 5,430
3
votes
Pseudocode or Flowcharts?
Both are a requirement of one of the courses that I teach. I like to start with a flowchart, as (for all the reasons mentioned by @GypsySpellweaver already) they provide a good visual representation ...
- 744
3
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
Binary digital computers (and the execution of most programming languages) are just big state machines at their very heart. State machines usually require non-sequential state changes. e.g. ...
- 1,895
2
votes
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
I will concern myself mostly with goto, but first a little on flow charts.
On Flow charts
I see flow charts as just a ways to visually represent goto-ful low-...
- 10.7k
1
vote
Is there any value in teaching goto statement or flowcharts?
goto is not bad per se, it depends the way you use it, that's the way Dijkstra and other papers should be read. It can be very useful to simply get out from inner ...
1
vote
Pseudocode or Flowcharts?
While both notations have their use, I would only use flow charts when the algorithm lends itself to it, namely when the algorithm is made of loops and conditionals.
If your algorithm is recursive ...
- 727
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