ROUTINE

Charles François (2004). ROUTINE, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2897.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(2)
ID	◀ 2897 ▶
Object type	Methodology or model

A fixed set of instructions in a program, that can be used everytime in similar situations.

H. SIMON explains: “Any module (or routine) in a well structured program, can be characterized by the inputs it needs, the outputs it produces and the transformations it operates on the inputs. The internal language used in such a module, its way to operate the transformations are not significant for its characterization. Thus any other module in the system may call on a given module without any need to know its internal structure; the whole communication between modules is channeled through their inputs-outputs” (1990, p.141 — retranslated from French!).

It seems thus that routines are necessarily algorithmic.