Ask HN: Do you still create flowcharts before making programs?

Yes, in the following cases:

  1. for non-trivial business logic which is confusing/unclear
  2. when I need to explain or present it to others
  3. when I need to explain it to myself (similarly to Rubber duck Debugging [1])
  4. when starting working on a new codebase, especially if it's poorly-documented and/or legacy

Also, you don't need to create flowcharts for the entire program/application, only for the difficult parts. Likewise there is no need to document the non-functional parts, i.e. stuff done by the framework or common libraries.

BTW: flowcharts are less useful in general and can be easily replaced by pseudocode. IMO the most useful diagrams in Software Engineering are MSD (Message Sequence Diagrams), then Call Graphs [2] (sometimes can be created automatically with profilers/intrumentation/tracing tools), then dataflow diagrams.

State Machine diagrams and ERDs[3] are also useful when applicable.

--

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_graph

3. https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/er-diagrams

Yes, at work we often map out the user flow when embarking on implementing be functionality. It's very useful for product, design, and tech folk alike to be able to visually see the paths and permutations all together.

We use Plectica[1], but there are a bunch of good tools that can do this.

[1]: https://beta.plectica.com

I don't create a physical or digital flowchart but I guess I probably have one constructed in my head. As the program gets bigger I tend to document more flowcharts.

Yes. 100%. Designs of how the app is going to look. Sometimes these are even interactive, and convert to CSS.

No, and I often wish I did. The discipline of the constraint to logic is useful