Abstract
As a programming assignment in a graduate programming course, students were to program an interactive word game, JOTTO. The language used was APL, under constraints of well-structured programming and complete control of the user-machine interaction. In response to complaints that teamwork was an impediment to programming and that it was not possible to write efficient well-structured programs in APL, the instructors undertook to complete the assignment working as a team. The results of the effort were carefully documented, including experiences with program modification, and are presented here, as they were to the class, to illustrate the principles that should be communicated to professional programmers.
- 1 Thomas W.-S. Plum and G.M. Weinberg, "Teaching Experienced Professionals: Remedial Programming", in Proceedings of the IFIP Working Conference on Programming Teaching Techniques, North Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1973.Google Scholar
- 2 The New Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Co., New York. (Available, for scholarly use, on magnetic tape.)Google Scholar
- 3 I. Nassi and B. Schneiderman, "Flowchart Techniques for Structured Programming", Technical Report Number 8, SUNY at Stony Brook.Google Scholar
- 4 D.L. Parnas, "On the Criteria to be used in Decomposing Systems into Modules", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 15, No. 12. December 1972, pp. 1053-1058. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- 5 G.M. Weinberg, PL/I Programming: A Manual of Style, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1970Google Scholar
- 6 G.M. Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1971. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- 7 D. Weinberg and G.M. Weinberg, "Experimental Use of a Computer in the Field—Kinship Information", Social Science Information, December 1972.Google Scholar
Index Terms
Teaching structured programming attitudes, even in APL, by example
Recommendations
Teaching structured programming attitudes, even in APL, by example
SIGCSE '74: Proceedings of the fourth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science educationAs a programming assignment in a graduate programming course, students were to program an interactive word game, JOTTO. The language used was APL, under constraints of well-structured programming and complete control of the user-machine interaction. In ...
Using literate programming to teach good programming practices
The ability to comprehend a program written by other individuals is becoming increasingly important in software development and maintenance. In an attempt to encourage undergraduate Computer Science students to write informative and usable documentation,...






Comments