An Overview of Program Design

The last decade has seen the recognition of programming as an area of study in its own right. It was only a few years ago that programming techniques could be summarised as the optimisation of loops by the removal of statements unaffected by the progress of the iteration. The concern then was largely one of efficiency. Today efficiency and optimisation are seen as secondary to the problem of reliability and correctness. Indeed Michael Jackson, an authority on program design proposes the following golden rules for optimisation.