From the very earliest days of electronic computing, flowcharts have been used to represent the conceptual structure of complex software systems. In much of the literature on software development, the flowchart serves as the central design document around which systems analysts, computer programmers, and end users communicate, negotiate, and represent complexity. And yet the meaning of any particular flowchart was often highly contested, and the apparent specificity of such design documents rarely reflected reality. Drawing on the sociological concept of the boundary object, this article explores the material culture of software development with a particular focus on the ways in which flowcharts served as political artifacts within the emerging communities of practices of computer programming.

中文翻译：

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流程图的多重含义

从电子计算的最早期开始，流程图就被用来表示复杂软件系统的概念结构。在许多关于软件开发的文献中，流程图是系统分析师、计算机程序员和最终用户围绕它进行交流、协商和表示复杂性的中心设计文档。然而，任何特定流程图的含义常常受到高度争议，此类设计文档的明显特殊性很少反映现实。本文利用边界对象的社会学概念，探讨了软件开发的物质文化，特别关注流程图在新兴的计算机编程实践社区中作为政治产物的方式。