Anyway, I thought you all might be interested. I think this is a
really
effective way of teaching programming (or computers, for that
matter)...

Jon
----
Learn to program using Linux assembly language
http://www.cafeshops.com/bartlettpublish.8640017

I'm teaching at our local community college as an adjunct. They have an
"intro to programming" class which teaches flow charting, logic, and
design principles for new programmers, using mostly pseudo-code rather
than actual programs.

[...] Anyway, being a believer in knowing assembly language, I
decided to put together a computer simulation. I "designed" a
simplified computer (25 instructions - add, subtract, load,
store, divide, jump, and jump conditional, with a few different
addressing modes for each of them). I had them simulate being
the computer. I had a memory address space as a grid of 255
boxes on posterboard. [...]

Jonathan Bartlett <johnnyb@eskimo.com> writes:

[...] Anyway, being a believer in knowing assembly language, I
decided to put together a computer simulation. I "designed" a
simplified computer (25 instructions - add, subtract, load,
store, divide, jump, and jump conditional, with a few different
addressing modes for each of them). I had them simulate being
the computer. I had a memory address space as a grid of 255
boxes on posterboard. [...]

I've actually seen this kind of simulation done with relatively
young children--6th graders if I recall correctly. It worked out
really well. I think this is a great way to introduce people to
how computers work internally.

I can think of a large number of college graduates that dearly
need such a program right now.



Long long time ago there was a text book by Knuth that had something

I'm teaching at our local community college as an adjunct. They have
an
"intro to programming" class which teaches flow charting, logic, and
design principles for new programmers, using mostly pseudo-code
rather
than actual programs.

Why not use real code in a readable, high-level language such as
Python? I think that is a better way to intoduce newbies to
programming
than pseudo-code or machine language.

I'm teaching at our local community college as an adjunct. They have
an
"intro to programming" class which teaches flow charting, logic, and
design principles for new programmers, using mostly pseudo-code
rather
than actual programs.

Why not use real code in a readable, high-level language such as
Python? I think that is a better way to intoduce newbies to programming
than pseudo-code or machine language.

Why not use real code in a readable, high-level language such as
Python? I think that is a better way to intoduce newbies to
programming
than pseudo-code or machine language.

Because then you still have no conception about what the computer is or
does. So many constructs in high-level languages are impacted by the
low-level design. Understanding how a computer works requires thinking
about the programming from the perspective of the computer. Python
doesn't give you that.

At Berkeley our curriculum is organized on this principle. Our
first course is the (Scheme-based) Abelson and Sussman _Structure
and Interpretation of Computer Programs_, a high-level introduction
to programming paradigms such as functional programming and
object-oriented programming. Our second course, data structures,
is taught in Java, a medium-level language (it's high level in that
it has automatic memory allocation, but low level in that the
programmer is supposed to know things like how many bits in an
integer). And our third course, machine organization, is taught
in C and (MIPS) assembly language, and even an introduction to
hardware (in Verilog), providing the low-level view you favor.

I acknowledge that there are also plausible arguments for moving
in the other direction.

But let's not waste time on straw-man
hypothetical curricula that leave out either the high-level or
the low-level view.

That doesn't imply that the lowest level is the right place to *start*.
Here are two arguments for starting at a higher level of abstraction:

1. Most programmers spend most of their time trying to get a large
system to work; in that context, what counts is the ability to
express the desired behavior using modularity, data abstraction, etc.
Fine-tuning for performance comes later. "It's easier to make a
working program run fast than to make a fast program run correctly."

2. Obsessive attention to small details is a turn-off to many
beginners (perhaps especially women) whose learning style isn't a
good match for that approach, but who might really enjoy computer
science if it is presented, in the beginning, in terms of the
goals an application programmer wants to achieve.

At Berkeley our curriculum is organized on this principle. Our
first course is the (Scheme-based) Abelson and Sussman _Structure
and Interpretation of Computer Programs_, a high-level introduction
to programming paradigms such as functional programming and
object-oriented programming. Our second course, data structures,
is taught in Java, a medium-level language (it's high level in that
it has automatic memory allocation, but low level in that the
programmer is supposed to know things like how many bits in an
integer). And our third course, machine organization, is taught
in C and (MIPS) assembly language, and even an introduction to
hardware (in Verilog), providing the low-level view you favor.

I acknowledge that there are also plausible arguments for moving
in the other direction. But let's not waste time on straw-man
hypothetical curricula that leave out either the high-level or
the low-level view.

That doesn't imply that the lowest level is the right place to *start*.

1. Most programmers spend most of their time trying to get a large
system to work; in that context, what counts is the ability to
express the desired behavior using modularity, data abstraction, etc.
Fine-tuning for performance comes later. "It's easier to make a
working program run fast than to make a fast program run correctly."

2. Obsessive attention to small details is a turn-off to many
beginners (perhaps especially women) whose learning style isn't a
good match for that approach, but who might really enjoy computer
science if it is presented, in the beginning, in terms of the
goals an application programmer wants to achieve.

That doesn't imply that the lowest level is the right place to *start*.

Here's why I think it's a great place to start:

* Machine language is very concrete....

My apologies; I was being careless, and had no intention of
offending assembly-language programmers. I was one myself for