This paper reviews the relative effectiveness of decision tables, decision trees, and structured English for program design and coding. Each method was tested for the two major programming tasks of describing conditional logic and converting the logic into programming statements. Personally, I was never able to develop much enthusiasm for decision tables. They looked good on paper, but seemed dull and mechanical to apply. For describing conditional logic, decision trees were found to be superior to structured English.
Logic is easier to develop and verify using pictorial methods such as decision trees.
For converting the logic to programming code, decision trees and structured English were equal. I hope automating code generation will soon eliminate much of the need for the second task, and simultaneously increase code quality and efficiency, and get it done faster as well. This research should have been done a long time ago. Similar research should evaluate design and coding techniques for fourth generation languages, as well as for program and application generator tools before they become obsolete. Maybe we'll be able to fight past vendor and academic puffery in time to save us from the horrors of elegant but inefficient and uninteresting ways.