RE: Break Problems Down – SQLServerCentral

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Points: 1003873

November 22, 2018 at 1:30 pm

#2014350

Frank W Fulton Jr - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 7:24 PM
Back in the Day when we used Punch Cards, Terminals and Teletypes, we would actually create flow charts for how we expected the programs to flow. Then we would write Pseudocode, and step through it several times keeping track of the variables, etc.. Next we would chose the best language to use from what was available PL/1, COBAL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and my personal favorite Assembly.
Today most people (myself included) usually sit down and start writing code in the company standard language and keep adding functions till we have it all working, and then we check to see if it works right.

If I haven't actually drawn a flow chart, the first thing I do is write comments as if they were a flow chart. Then I fill in the space between the comments with code to do what the comments say. I test each section of code as I write it to ensure that it's working correctly and with the right amount of performance so that I don't have to go back to it once I add the final semi-colon to indicate that section is done.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)