AbstractRecently there has been substantial interest in promoting ‘Structured Programming’ as a means of writing more nearly error free programs. However since the chief advocates of structured programming use ALGOL or PASCAL, and disdain FORTRAN, there is a difficulty in communication. Since it is my perception that structured programming and the lessons to be learned from proofs of correctness can be applied in any language, including FORTRAN, I feel that these ideas should be promulgated to applied scientific programmers.Hence this paper will commence with a summary of the whole complex of ideas and practices that are subsumed under the term ‘Structured Programming’. Then some simple examples of top down design and programming will be given. Finally I will return to a discussion of some of the problems which are likely to be encountered in the use and promulgation of structured prog