Graphical User Interface Programming in Introductory Computer Science.
Michael M. Skolnick, David L. Spooner · 1995
Modern computing systems exploit graphical user interfaces for interaction with users. As a result, introductory computer science courses must begin to teach the principles underlying such interfaces. This paper presents an approach to graphical user interface implementation that is simple enough for beginning students to understand, yet rich enough to demonstrate many important concepts and trade-offs in computer science. Introduction A major problem confronting teachers of introductory computer science courses is that, while most computational environments that students are exposed to involve graphical user interfaces (GUIs), the I/O programming paradigm that they are typically introduced to is character based. The irony is that students are using and enjoying the flexibility of GUIs but from a programming point of view they could just as well be using teletype machines. It is clearly no longer acceptable to give students programming exercises where graphical information is output a...