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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:17:50 +0200
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: Ada for 1st year students
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Colin Paul Gloster schrieb:

> Perhaps it is possible to concentrate excessively on mathematics, but
> would you disapprove of the following exercise from a textbook because
> it requires a basic familiarity with things which are not computers?
> "Suppose every student except student b passes their electronics
> exam. Write the relevant Pascal program text for representing the set
> of students who fail electronics." Those things being for example any
> of a student; electronics; failure; and calling a student "b".

This example shows two processes involved in problem
solving:  (1) Transporting the problem from its own domain to
the computer abstraction. (2) Solving the programming problem.

I'd suggest, then, that first the transport destination (computer)
must become a familiar item. Can't expect anyone to operate
unfamiliar, complex machinery... That is, students must know
what a computer is in order to write programs.

So instead of starting with algorithms involving students,
examinations, eventualities, and other deceptively familiar
things, introduce an array as an addressable sequence of memory
cells. Have them contain bit patterns.  Propose to solve the
follosing problem: Find a particular pattern "b" in the array.

I think there is a lot to learn from array searching.
You need the very basics of programming.  The advantage of
starting with the computer and nothing else is that you do not
loose focus.
I think there is a famous paper entitled "An algorithm, Find."
or similar.

Of course, you can't find a programming solution to some real
world problem without also knowing how to find abstractions.
Later.