On the use of naming and binding in early courses
Mark K. Smotherman · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1987
In most computer science curricula, the concepts of naming and binding are explicitly treated only in a small number of the later courses, such as operating systems and programming language foundations. However, these concepts are fundamental and underlie the whole of computer science. In this paper, a proposal is made to explicitly introduce these concepts in the second or third course so that they may be used in the analysis of ideas encountered throughout a student's program of study. The benefit of this earlier introduction is demonstrated by detailing how a computer organization course can explicitly incorporate these concepts. These concepts can also be used to advantage in other early courses, such as data structures.