Software Engineering | Structured Programming

A structured programming language facilitates or enforces structured programming practices. A program is called structured when it uses only the sequence, selection and iteration types of constructs and is modular.

Structured programming is facilitated, if the programming language being used supports single-entry, single-exit program constructs such as if-then-else, do-while etc. Thus an important feature of structured programs is the design of good control structures.

Besides the control structure aspects, the term structured program is being used to denote a couple of other program features as well. A structured program should be modular. We use structured programming because it allows the programmer to understand the program easily.

Structured programming encourages dividing an application program into a hierarchy of modules or autonomous elements, which may, in turn, contain other such elements. Within each element, code may be further structured using blocks of related logic designed to improve readability and maintainability. These may include case, which tests a variable against a set of values repeat, while and for, which construct loops that continue until a condition is met.

Structured programming encourages the developer to use subroutine and loops instead of using simple jumps in the code, thereby bring clarity in the code and improving its efficiency. Structured programming also helps programmer to reduce coding time and organize code properly.

The main advantage of writing structured program compared to unstructured program is that programmer commit less number of errors while using structured if-then-else and do-while statements. Besides being less error prone, structured program are normally more readable, easier to maintain and require less effort to develop compared to unstructured programs.