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From: jimc@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal,net.college,net.lang,net.cse
Subject: Re: introductory programming languages
Message-ID: <9490@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 13:47:24 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.9490
Posted: Fri Feb 28 13:47:24 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 23:23:44 EST
References: <109@polyob.UUCP> <9378@ritcv.UUCP> <6796@boring.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimc@ucla-cs.UUCP (Jim Carter)
Distribution: net
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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Xref: watmath net.lang.pascal:501 net.college:1164 net.lang:2172 net.cse:645

In article <6796@boring.UUCP> steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton) writes:
>In my view, an introductory programming course should teach as much as
>possible about algorithms and programming, and as little as possible about
>the nuts and bolts of programming languages. The programming language used
>should therefore support this as much as possible by allowing algorithms to
>be expressed as closely as possible to their formulation, without the
>language imposing itself too much.
>

I certainly agree.  A family member learning programming started out going
through chapter 1 of Kernighan and Ritchie, and learned a lot, but started
getting bogged down when algorithm design started to dominate the programming
task.  She started an intro to DP class, in which was assigned "Karel the
Robot" by (sorry, book not at hand).  It turned out to be a VERY effective
introduction to structured programming and algorithm design, with all the
messes of math, data types, etc.etc. stripped away.  The idea is, there's this
programmable robot which can move, pick up objects, iterate...  An emulator
for the robot is available, sort of as shareware i.e. not free (see the book
for address).  But it's quite practical to emulate the robot by hand.

-- 
James F. Carter            (213) 206-1306
UCLA-SEASnet; 2567 Boelter Hall; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA 90024
UUCP:...!{ihnp4,ucbvax,{hao!cepu}}!ucla-cs!jimc  ARPA:jimc@locus.UCLA.EDU