Algorithms first

Authors:
Larry J. Morell
Affiliations:
Arkansas Tech University, Russellville, AR
Venue:
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
Year:
2005

Citing 2
Cited 1

Algorithms in Genesis

Proceedings of the 2nd annual conference on Mid-south college computing
Programming perl, third edition

Programming perl, third edition

Adding object-orientation to Genesis

Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges

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Abstract

An approach to teaching introductory programming is discussed in which substantial time is devoted to the discussion of algorithms before introducing the programming language. The approach, called "algorithms first", was tried in an introductory course of programming in C. Algorithms were written by students during the first seven weeks of the course in an executable algorithm language called Genesis. During the last seven weeks students translated algorithms into C. The overall results seem to favor the approach. Strengths and weaknesses of the approach are discussed along with suggestions for adapting this technique to a variety of course structures.