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Abstract
This research reports on COBOL programmer choice of design techniques. Also reported are the observed relationships between design technique and program correctness, and between design technique and program development effort. Preference for design technique was maximal for pseudocode (43%) with the flowchart being the second most preferred (31%) design tool. Among programs designed using pseudocode, 59% were correct; among programs designed using flowcharts, 52% were correct. In addition, design time, debug time, and code time were all substantially less for successfully debugged programs designed with pseudocode, as compared with all other design techniques (including the flowchart) used in this experiment, with statistical significance at least at the .05 level for each task. Furthermore, the choice of design tool was shown to explain (i.e., the r2s were) 24%, 22%, 32% of the variance in design time, debug time, code time, respectively.