An experiment in teaching programming languages
Farhad Mavaddat · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1976
To alleviate some difficulties involved in teaching programming in an introductory course, a simple programmable machine of mechanical nature with a small set of very tangible instructions is proposed. All the necessary concepts such as sequencing, looping, sub-routines and declarative statements are introduced in the framework of this machine. A number of examples are discussed which illustrate the use of this programmable machine. It is argued that a simplified version ofmost programming language is easily teachable by relating the simplified language to the concepts developed for this machine. A simplified version of Fortran is treated as an illustration.