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I was taught to program the way Phil Graham was, but in the late 1960's, there was no alternative. One laboriously drew flow charts, and wrote code onto green and white pads of paper before key punching the program into a deck of cards. I worked like this for many years, first in FORTRAN and then in PL/I. Debugging consisted of loading the card deck into a station wagon for an overnight trip across the Hudson River, and pouring over a listing the next morning, only to repeat this slow cycle. Then, computer time was expensive, but mine was cheap. It was a slow process, but I still managed to get the job done, and in the process learned to be REAL careful every step of the way.

Needless to say, I don't program that way anymore. The balance has changed, with computer time incredibly cheap, but programmer time dear. Like Phil, I often explore ideas as I code, playing with designs as I code and debug. Fortunately, I now use a language - Smalltalk - that enables and encourages this kind of exploration. But old habits die hard. I still tend to spend a lot of up-front time on design, and I still tend to be real careful. I'm not convinced that you can produce good code otherwise. I've seen too many examples of hack-work to believe otherwise.