Another experiment with teaching of programming languages

Abstract

The key issue in successful teaching is that of keeping the interest of students alive. In a first course on computer programming, this can be achieved by presenting interesting problems of reasonable complexity early in the course. This is often a difficult task, as most of the common programming languages used for instruction are intangible and therefore cumbersome to master before any serious programming may start.Here a simple and tangible programmable machine is introduced. It is shown that important programming concepts can be defined and exercised in terms of possible operations on this machine. It is also shown that a seemingly difficult problem can be solved by novice programmers within the first few sessions of an introductory course.