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From: balcer@demon.siemens.com (Marc J Balcer)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: CS-1
Summary: Pseudocode for teaching?
Keywords: beginning computer science course
Message-ID: <8602@siemens.siemens.com>
Date: 5 May 89 16:24:02 GMT
References: <2130@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <2394@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Sender: news@siemens.siemens.com
Reply-To: balcer@demon.UUCP (Marc J Balcer)
Organization: Siemens Research and Technology Laboratories
Lines: 65

In article <2394@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> nick@cs.hw.ac.uk (Nick Taylor) writes:
>In article <2130@iitmax.IIT.EDU> thssccb@iitmax.IIT.EDU (catherine c bareiss) writes:
>>       One day a week, a lecture on a topic (using psuedo code).
>
>Is this a good idea? ...
>but I harbour deep suspicions that it might actually make the learning task
>more confusing... 

After about 4-5 weeks in the introductory Pascal course,
I'll start using a pseudocode when explaining algorithms.
Example:

    set total to zero
    for every element in table do
	add its value to the total
	write the value
    end
    print the total

Invariably there will be the student(s) who have not yet
mastered even the most fundamental detail of Pascal syntax
and many others for whom the syntax is not "second nature."
Some will copy down the pseudocode word-for-word and then
type it in and try to run it.  (It happens)  

It's very difficult for students, when confronted with
several very similar notations, to keep straight "this is
design language," "this is Pascal," "this is Scheme."

Now in a Data Structures or Compiler Design class, there's
usually very little problem with using pseudocode.  It's a
convenient, informal shorthand.  These students have
mastered the syntax of their programming language.

>... an aid to programming language teaching - especially for
>teaching a first language.
>

Many of us who teach programming (er, I mean "introductory
computer science") courses have struggled with this.  It
would certainly be nice to have students who complete the
first year of CS able to:

    -	see a computer as more than just a "Pascal box"

    -   think about a problem at a more abstract level than the
	implementation language 

    -	see Computer Science as more than "just learning
	languages"

yet also able to plan and write clear, coherent programs.

One popular approach is to teach the course either
"language-free" or using several languages at once.  We
justify this by saying (and rightly so) that a computer
scientist must be capable of working with several different
notations.  BUT can we expect that every student will be
immediately capable of making these kinds of "context
switches?"  I'm not sure.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc J. Balcer
[balcer@demon.siemens.com]
Siemens Research Center, 755 College Road East, Princeton, NJ 08540