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What's the name for those diagram used to sketch the flow of a program? What are these sketches called?

The shapes of the objects are by convention ellipse for an action, rhombus for a question, rectangle for a statement, etc.

enter image description here

Shimmy Weitzhandler
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    It's a flowchart. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart – Robert Harvey Oct 28 '14 at 22:52
  • So should I delete the question now or keep it for the reference? – Shimmy Weitzhandler Oct 28 '14 at 22:52
  • Everybody here has probably seen one. – Robert Harvey Oct 28 '14 at 22:53
  • I've also seen it many times, but now I spent over 5 minutes finding out its official name... So again, should I delete question or not? – Shimmy Weitzhandler Oct 28 '14 at 22:56
  • How would someone find your question without the name of the diagram? – Robert Harvey Oct 28 '14 at 23:00
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    Good point. But I was searching for the term '*[diagram name](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=diagram+name)*' and [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195720/11448) question came up, not addressing my type of diagram. So now my question ranks #2, and will pop up on a user trying to post a similar question. And actually, the fact that there is another similar question is an evidence that people do come to this website with this type of questions, that includes referrals by Google or other search engines. So I've made a flowchart about it and the decision was to keep it!.. – Shimmy Weitzhandler Oct 28 '14 at 23:10
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    Fair enough.... – Robert Harvey Oct 28 '14 at 23:10

2 Answers2

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Flowchart or Decision Tree.

Probably the most traditional term, in spite of my preference, is Flowchart, from the traditional, waterfall engineering model. It is commonly used in software, business, and industrial engineering.

I tend to prefer the latter term in this context. The term Flowchart is often misused (as we know, many people aren't formally educated). I've seen people refer to any sort of diagram with processes, data and system-components as a Flowchart, when actually they have a Data Flow Diagram or Component Diagram, which are other common software engineering diagrams. With "Decision Tree", I feel like I'm being more specific.

Some common engineering diagrams:

codenheim
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  • Is it still called a Decision Tree when it's not a tree? The given example is a directed acyclic graph but not a tree. – raptortech97 Oct 28 '14 at 22:57
  • According to Wikipadia, [decision tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree) is like a super-set of [flowchart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart). – Shimmy Weitzhandler Oct 28 '14 at 23:00
  • Yeah, not a decision tree. The diagram in the OP is a flowchart. I can say k-ary tree too, but if it's a binary tree, that's what I'm going to call it, because that's what everyone recognizes. – Robert Harvey Oct 28 '14 at 23:01
  • @raptortech97 Yes, its still a decision tree. Nothing says trees have to be binary, divergent trees. (Well we obviously have a difference in opinion) – codenheim Oct 28 '14 at 23:01
  • I just said I prefer the latter term. I don't disagree with either term. In the traditional waterfall model we learned in Computer Science in the 90s, the term was flowchart. – codenheim Oct 28 '14 at 23:03
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    Flowchart - traditional name, for the last 50+ years. Graph - yes it is, but it's not the **Professional Name**. Tree - it's simply *not* a tree. – andy256 Oct 28 '14 at 23:29
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It's probably a Flowchart, but the title asks a different question than the body, which I will try to address next.

One common convention is UML (Unified Modelling Language) from the people over at the excellently named, OMG (Object Management Group). http://www.omg.org/gettingstarted/what_is_uml.htm

There are a number of different diagrams which runs the gamut from Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams (similar to a flowchart), sequence diagrams (my particular favourite), Class diagrams, and many many more including modelling business processes at large organisational scales.

The specifications list might be a good start if you want to know more: http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/

ahdkaw
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