Why do we always write the PAPER before doing the OUTLINE?
Guest,
I was pleased to see that you started off asking about OUTPUTS. Most questions on here start off by giving detailed descriptions of all the Input conditions, with nary a thought about the RESULTS, the Outputs. It reminds me of my high school English class. Mrs. Brewer would say, "now class, before you write your paper, first make an outline summary of your subject." Of course we always wrote down a bunch of unorganized sentences, then went back and tried to make an outline fit what we had written. Doing the outline first would have made the writing SO much easier, had I only known how.
Why do programmers always start on the left side with a bunch of INPUTS? We then try to make them fit an OUTPUT at the end of the rung, usually finding that by the time we get over that far, our output doesn't exactly work with the hodge-podge of inputs that have been strewn about, so we go back and re-do them. Is it because we were taught to read from right to left, so we think we have to program in the same direction? Wouldn't it be easier to put in all the outputs on the RIGHT side of blanks rungs, labeling and documenting each one, then go back and do the Stop Inputs, and then the Start Inputs for each rung? Is there something scary about blank rungs? Will someone please explain this to me? Surely I am not alone in remembering how it was to build relay panels. With relays, you had to put in your "outputs" (coils) first, before you could connect any inputs. This seems the natural way to do it to me, but I have never found anyone else that seems to think it matters.