How to Program

How to Go About Creating a Program

1. Get a pencil and paper.
2. Get an eraser.
3. Consider what instructions are available.
4. Consider what the program is to do.
5. Determine a major operating instruction.
6. Write it down. (It may not be the first one in the final program. It probably will not be.)
7. Consider what the program is to do again.
8. Determine an operating instruction which must precede or follow the one you have written.
9. Write it down.
10. Go on in this way.
11. Do not be afraid to write instructions in front of those you have already written.
12. Do not be afraid to erase what you have written, all or part.
13. When first writing instructions do not hesitate to leave addresses in them temporarily blank. Do not fail to go back and fill in these blanks before you consider the program finished.
14. Go over the program carefully at your desk, testing its action mentally on the several possible cases it must handle.
15. Test the program on the computer with test data which will take it through the several cases.

From Programming the IBM 1620: the hands-on approach by Eric Weiss (1965), pg. 46