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From: slimick@unix.cis.pitt.edu (John C Slimick)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: First Year CS Curriculum
Summary: Experience with Intro to CS course
Message-ID: <48484@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 90 20:24:54 GMT
References: <1990Oct10.190410.19136@water.waterloo.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services
Lines: 41



We have been using the text "Programming Principles"
for our Intro to CS course for the last four years or so.
While not a complete survey, we do manage to cover the following:

	Breakout diagrams (like Warnier diagrams)
	Flow charts
	Nassi-Schneidermann diagrams
	decision tables
	data flow diagrams
	pseudocode
	binary, hex, octal
	assembly language (quick word on architecture)
	formal languages
	BNF and railroad tracks
	lots and lots of problem solving

	and, of course, Pascal

Some years we manage to include state machines as well; in the
book (but never covered) are contour models and loop invariants

This book now exists in a Modula edition; publisher is WCB.

Another possibility is "Computer Science: an Overview" by 
J. Glenn Brookshear (Benjamin Cummings). It really covers the
field at an introductory level, and could be used in a first
course where the students have all had substantial computer
exposure previously (which ours haven't). In a first course
it would probably require a parallel effort in Pascal.

(one possible play for the hometown crowd: John Motil is a 
Canadian, exiled to Southern California)
john slimick
university of pittsburgh at bradford
bradford pa
slimick@unix.cis.pitt.edu