From Problems to Programs via Plans: The Content and Structure of Knowledge for Introductory LISP Programming

Abstract

Typically, when a programming language is taught, the syntax and the semantics of the language are emphasized. In contrast, we report here on an organization of information for teaching LISP which puts primary emphasis on the structure of and relationships between: a problem, a program, and, an intermediate abstraction, a plan. This organization is based on an analysis of the underlying structure of ostensibly different problems and their program solutions. We present qualitative observations on the use of this organization gleaned from actual classroom teaching. Finally, we attempt to generalize these notions to other problem domains and to other programming languages.