Greg Wilson pointed me to this old (1989) IEEE Software article: Structured flowcharts outperform pseudocode: an experimental comparison by David A. Scanlan.

In the paper, the author empirically shows that significantly less time is required to comprehend algorithms represented as pseudocode flowcharts. He ended up saying “I am not suggesting that we should all
retrieve our flowchart templates from the attic, but I am suggesting that we continue to move toward graphical documentation. We must develop methods that optimally combine graphics and text”. He even says:

Flaws in previous research may have masked the superiority of structured flowcharts … for helping programmers understand algorithms

The following Figure (Fig.5 in the referenced article) reports the mean times subjects spent looking at algorithms when answering a set of test questions about them, clearly showing that the more complex the more flowcharts become a better tool.

So, as you can see, the discussion modeling vs programming (or what it is the same, about the benefits of modeling) is almost as old as computer science itself (well, I´m exaggerating a bit here, but you get the point). It’s a pity that even if some papers like this one already showed the superiority of modeling and using higher abstraction representations (at least for some tasks) a long time ago, many practitioners prefer not to listen.

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