A top-down approach to teaching an introductory computer science course
Thomas B. Hilburn · 1993
This paper presents a non-traditional approach to teaching the first course in programming for computer science majors: the use of an instructional strategy that relies on a top-down methodology to develop programming skills and problem-solving capabilities.The Ada programming language is used to implement the instructional strategy that is described.The course relies on a set of predefine Ada packages, referred to as programmer "toolboxes", to first give the novice programmer experience with high-level modular programming, and then to proceed, in a stepby-step manner, to address lower level programming concerns by stripping off layers of abstraction and adding detail about design and implementation of the toolboxes.The paper advances and advocates the idea that modem concepts about top-down modular software development can and should be applied to the teaching of introductory computer programming.