The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart.

From the very earliest days of electronic computing, flowcharts have been used to represent the conceptual structure of complex software systems. In much of the literature on software development, the flowchart serves as the central design document around which systems analysts, computer programmers...

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Published in:Information & Culture Vol. 51; no. 3; pp. 321 - 352
Main Author: Ensmenger, Nathan
Format: Article
Published: University of Texas Press 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart.
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        au: Ensmenger, Nathan
        affil: Associate professor, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University
      su:
        Flow charts
        Computer software development
        Computer programmers
        Von Neumann, John, 1903-1957
        Computer programming
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          Flow charts
          Computer software development
          Computer programmers
          Von Neumann, John, 1903-1957
          Computer programming
      ab: From the very earliest days of electronic computing, flowcharts have been used to represent the conceptual structure of complex software systems. In much of the literature on software development, the flowchart serves as the central design document around which systems analysts, computer programmers, and end users communicate, negotiate, and represent complexity. And yet the meaning of any particular flowchart was often highly contested, and the apparent specificity of such design documents rarely reflected reality. Drawing on the sociological concept of the boundary object, this article explores the material culture of software development with a particular focus on the ways in which flowcharts served as political artifacts within the emerging communities of practices of computer programming.
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