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Teaching programming to beginners

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Robert P. TaylorAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 9, Issue 1

Pages 88 - 92

https://doi.org/10.1145/382063.803365

Published: 01 February 1977 Publication History

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Abstract

Because of the rapid growth of computing and its influence in schools and community colleges, we find we must teach a growing number of graduate teachers and administrators how to program. Because we firmly believe that the only programming worth doing is well-structured programming, this is the sort of programming we want to teach these graduates to do. Because BASIC, FORTRAN, and COBOL are so widely implemented around the world, we know that one or more of these languages will be the ones most of our students will end up programming in, after they leave Columbia. Because such languages are not particularly well-suited for teaching structured programming to beginners, we decided to develop an indirect approach to this goal, one which would make the learning of these languages the learning of second languages in a second phase of learning to program. The approach which we have been developing, including the major components of a first programming language - FPL, is suggested in the remainder of this paper. For us, it has proven to be an indirect but effective way to teach raw beginners how to write well-structured programs in archaic, ill-designed, high-level real languages.

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Cited By

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Rubiano SLopez-Cruz OSoto E(2015)Teaching computer programmingProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344184(1-9)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/FIE.2015.7344184
Mitchell W(1979)Another approach to service coursesACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/953030.80954111:1(6-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/953030.809541
Mitchell WKerr DDalphin J(1979)Another approach to service coursesProceedings of the tenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/800126.809541(6-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800126.809541
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Index Terms

Teaching programming to beginners
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques

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Information

Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 9, Issue 1

Special issue seventh technical symposium on computer science education

Feb 1977

187 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/382063

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGCSE '77: Proceedings of the seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
February 1977
187 pages
ISBN:9781450374071
DOI:10.1145/800104
Chairman:
Richard H. Austing

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 February 1977

Published in SIGCSE Volume 9, Issue 1

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Cited By

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Rubiano SLopez-Cruz OSoto E(2015)Teaching computer programmingProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344184(1-9)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/FIE.2015.7344184
Mitchell W(1979)Another approach to service coursesACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/953030.80954111:1(6-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/953030.809541
Mitchell WKerr DDalphin J(1979)Another approach to service coursesProceedings of the tenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/800126.809541(6-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800126.809541
Norris F(1978)An "introduction to computing" experiment that failedProceedings of the 16th annual Southeast regional conference10.1145/503643.503678(150-153)Online publication date: 13-Apr-1978
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/503643.503678
Mitchell W(1979)Another approach to service coursesACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/953030.80954111:1(6-9)Online publication date: Feb-1979
https://doi.org/10.1145/953030.809541
Mitchell WKerr DDalphin J(1979)Another approach to service coursesProceedings of the tenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/800126.809541(6-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800126.809541
Norris F(1978)An "introduction to computing" experiment that failedProceedings of the 16th annual Southeast regional conference10.1145/503643.503678(150-153)Online publication date: 13-Apr-1978
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/503643.503678

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