Those are great pictures, but the claim that drawing flow charts saved time in the punch card era doesn't make sense to me. My bet is that, then as now, good programmers soon discovered that they were a waste, favored only by textbook writers and managers. They are a non-programmer's idea of what a program ought to look like. There have always been far more powerful tools to work with in the absence of a keyboard, like pencil and paper—not to mention just plain thinking.

There are many programmers around who worked with punch cards. I have often heard them emphasize how important it was to get your program right the first time, because compile time was so lengthy and scarce. But I've never heard one say "that's why it was important to draw a flow chart first". If they had, I'd remember; it would have been such a surprise!

Some HNers must have been programming in those days. I'd like to hear from them about this.