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From: fgtbell@kcl-cs.UUCP (ZNAC450)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.lang
Subject: Re: introductory programming languages
Message-ID: <643@neon.kcl-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Mar-86 09:50:26 EST
Article-I.D.: neon.643
Posted: Sat Mar  8 09:50:26 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Mar-86 21:45:46 EST
References: <109@polyob.UUCP> <9378@ritcv.UUCP> <6796@boring.UUCP> <9490@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Reply-To: fgtbell@kcl-cs.UUCP
Distribution: net
Organization: Department of Computing, Kings College, University of London.
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Xref: watmath net.college:1220 net.lang:2213

In article <9490@ucla-cs.ARPA> jimc@ucla-cs.UUCP (Jim Carter) writes:
>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.

Something like that is done here in a specially-invented design language
called Engol. Programs control the movement of a turtle which knows
about iteration as well as primitive functions like pen-up , move(),turn().
The outputs produced are rewarding as they are graphical,not masses of
figures,and the language also encourages top-down structured programming;
at any point,one can push detail down to a lower level to be defined later.
This is done by an everyday English sentence,eg
draw a side--
The language is converted into Algol 68 by a preprocessor,but that's not
the point.The point is that THIS is how you teach students about programming,
not by confusing them with real,char and int,though I admit
these have to be taught at some stage.