Flow charts are useful when designing computer programs. They are a way of planning out what you intend to do on paper to see if it works before you begin coding.

There are different symbols to learn and different methods to use. Like with anything you do a computer, there are lots of different ways to solve the same problem…we are trying to find the most efficient.

We tried to design a cup of tea making machine AND as you can see, it’s not as easy as it sounds!!! The computer can only do EXACTLY what you tell it to do so our instructions have to be specific and in the right order.  We also soon realised that there were choices to make, such as whether to add sugar or if the tea would be cool enough to drink.  We dealt with all of these problems through editing our flowcharts and trying to spot logic errors…just like real software developers.