Email this page to a friend

Top-down design

<programming> (Or "stepwise refinement").

The software design technique which aims to describe functionality at a very high level, then partition it repeatedly into more detailed levels one level at a time until the detail is sufficient to allow coding.

This approach to software design probably originated at IBM, and grew out of structured programming practices.

< Previous Terms	Terms Containing top-down design	Next Terms >
Tool Builder Kit Tool Command Language TOOLS toolsmith TOP	bottom-up implementation stepwise refinement structured design structured language	Top-Down Model topic drift topic group topic map topic thread