research-article

Experience report: growing programming languages for beginning students

Authors:

Marcus Crestani,

Michael SperberAuthors Info & Claims

ICFP '10: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

Pages 229 - 234

https://doi.org/10.1145/1863543.1863576

Published: 27 September 2010 Publication History

Abstract

A student learning how to program learns best when the programming language and programming environment cater to her specific needs. These needs are different from the requirements of a professional programmer. Consequently, the design of teaching languages poses challenges different from the design of professional languages. Using a functional language by itself gives advantages over more popular, professional languages, but fully exploiting these advantages requires careful adaptation to the needs of the students' as-is, these languages do not support the students nearly as well as they could. This paper describes our experience adopting the didactic approach of How to Design Programs, focussing on the design process for our own set of teaching languages. We have observed students as they try to program as part of our introductory course, and used these observations to significantly improve the design of these languages. This paper describes the changes we have made, and the journey we took to get there.

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Cited By

Morazán M(2020)Using Video Game Development to Motivate Program Design and Algebra Among Inner-City High School StudentsElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.321.5321(78-99)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.321.5
Morazán MDes Rosiers J(2019)FSM Error MessagesElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.295.1295(1-16)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2019
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.295.1
Almeida JCunha AMacedo NPacheco HProença J(2018)Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (experience report)Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32367772:ICFP(1-17)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236777
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Index Terms

Experience report: growing programming languages for beginning students
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICFP '10: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

September 2010

398 pages

ISBN:9781605587943

DOI:10.1145/1863543

General Chair:
Paul Hudak
Yale University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Stephanie Weirich
University of Pennsylvania, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 45, Issue 9
ICFP '10
September 2010
382 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1932681
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 September 2010

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introductory programming

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ICFP '10

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SIGPLAN

ICFP '10: ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

September 27 - 29, 2010

Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 333 of 1,064 submissions, 31%

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ICFP '25

Sponsor:
sigplan

ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

October 12 - 18, 2025

Singapore , Singapore

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Cited By

Morazán M(2020)Using Video Game Development to Motivate Program Design and Algebra Among Inner-City High School StudentsElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.321.5321(78-99)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.321.5
Morazán MDes Rosiers J(2019)FSM Error MessagesElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.295.1295(1-16)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2019
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.295.1
Almeida JCunha AMacedo NPacheco HProença J(2018)Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (experience report)Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32367772:ICFP(1-17)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236777
Uesbeck PStefik AHanenberg SPedersen JDaleiden PDillon LVisser WWilliams L(2016)An empirical study on the impact of C++ lambdas and programmer experienceProceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/2884781.2884849(760-771)Online publication date: 14-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2884781.2884849
Levy D(2013)Computer science education as part of an undergraduate program in community information systems2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2013.6684858(417-422)Online publication date: Oct-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2013.6684858
Chang S(2013)Laziness by needProceedings of the 22nd European conference on Programming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-642-37036-6_5(81-100)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-37036-6_5
Sperber MCrestani MDanvy O(2012)Form over functionProceedings of the 2012 Annual Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming10.1145/2661103.2661113(81-89)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2661103.2661113
Marceau GFisler KKrishnamurthi SHirschfeld RVisser E(2011)Mind your languageProceedings of the 10th SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software10.1145/2048237.2048241(3-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2048237.2048241
van der Storm THermans FFischer BBurgueño LCazzola W(2022)Gradual Grammars: Syntax in Levels and LocalesProceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3567512.3567524(134-147)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3567512.3567524
Ramsey N(2014)On teaching *how to design programs*ACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2692915.262813749:9(153-166)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2692915.2628137
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