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From: neitzel@infbs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: programming contest for beginners? - (nf)
Message-ID: <18100004@infbs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 22-Aug-87 19:22:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: infbs.18100004
Posted: Sat Aug 22 19:22:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 01:30:11 EDT
Lines: 33
Nf-ID: #N:infbs:18100004:000:1450
Nf-From: infbs!neitzel    Aug 23 00:22:00 1987

What about having a "programming contest" for students, who learn
their first programming language?  Has anybody done something like
this before?

I think of a contest, where the students program and/or "trade"
small, re-usable functions/modules for a continous project.  "Trading"
functions means: Programming is not for free, but you have to invest
some card-money per line, or something like that.  You may "sell" your
software to other participants, who then don't have to program these
functions on their own, but still have to integrate your functions
into their code...  I hope you get the idea.


						Martin Neitzel
				 ...!mcvax!unido!infbs!neitzel


[Even if this looks like a project for an advanced course in software
engineering, it could teach essential insights to the newcomers:

- what makes programs hard to read and understand
- the trade off between simplicity and generality
- the worth of documentation
- typical problems like "scopes" and "name conflicts"

and all the other things you can't experience when programming on your own.

Of course you must not be suprised, if such a programming project with
newcomers is a total failure, when you look at the software coming out
of it.  The students will make one error after another.  But they
would learn from exactly these errors, because they would ask themselves
"Why?".  The traditional programming assignments usually don't let the
student detect his own deficiencies.]