A Story About Teaching Programming

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A Story About Teaching Programming
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• I do not claim that I can tell a story as it
  ought to be told. I only claim to know how a
  story ought to be told, for I have been almost
  daily in the company of the most expert
  story-tellers for many years.
•  
• Mark Twain

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• It is easy to write a course outline. It is
  another matter entirely to move the content of
  that outline from the writers pen into the
  students brain.
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• Steve McConnell

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• The programmer, like the poet, works only
  slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He
  builds his castles in the air, from air, creating
  by exertion of the imagination.
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• Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

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• Story telling
• parables
• fables
• histories .
• myths
• fairy tales

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• not just entertainment
• educational purpose
• propaganda
• cautionary tales
• the Archers

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• Story telling in broadest sense
•  
• oral
• written
• films
• plays

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• People like stories
• want to hear them
• pass them on
• learn from them painlessly
• want to hear them again
•  
• seems were story tellers and listeners

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• so why not apply it to programming?
•  
• not rigidly
• metaphor
• simile
• a mindset
• teaching as a story / using stories
• programming as a story / script

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• Three strands
• teaching as story telling
• programming as story writing
• programs as story text

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Teaching As Story Telling
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• good story has
• beginning
• middle
• end
• characters
• some problem/adversity/ goal/aim
• reached or overcome
• its own internal logic
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• actually a bit like a good program

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•  
• what are we teaching?
•  
• not a language
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• teaching people to think - Dijkstra

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• syntax
• getting past the compiler
• logic
• getting past the problem
• testing
• getting past the user
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• binary opposites

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• syntactical structures
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• sequence
• iteration
• selection
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• tell em in the right order
• tell em repeatedly
• if one way doesnt work tell em another way
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• lets take selection structures
• if
• if else
• else if
• switch / case
• the c one with the question mark
• which do you teach first?
• in what order?

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• in a story
• characters have a narrative purpose
• have to be introduced naturally
• reader can only handle so many characters
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• apply this to teaching programming

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• why teach all selections at once?
• start with simplest
• introduce next
• when needed
• when it solves a purpose
• not syntax for the sake of completeness

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• the character of selection deepens but
  understandably
• problem followed by resolution
• a structure might exist
• do we have to teach it?

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• wood or trees?
• All those bells and whistles
• those so-called powerful features
• belong more to the problem set
• than to the solution set.
• Dijkstra

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• omniscient author
• my story my way
• dictatorial
• also humble
• in a tradition
• got the story from others
• heros

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• deliberate limit on structures
• say Im doing it
• promise Ill explain later
• keep that promise
•  
• Im not on oath
• I will lie to make things simpler
• ie tell stories

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Programming As Story Writing
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• how do we teach/encourage problem solving?
• how do we teach/encourage problem creativity?
• they have to
• understand the (trivial) problem is
• imagine a way to solve it
• code the solution

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• how do story tellers learn?
• By listening to story tellers
• look at program as story or script
• tell them how its been done before
• give them examples
• only so many plots

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• code reading exercises / examples
• code writing exercises / examples
• go hand in hand
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• The exercises are a series of McGuffins
• new syntax/ structures linked to problem solution

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Code Reading

• examples
• reworked using new structures
• reading each others code in pairs
• inspecting teachers code faulty examples
• anything can be inspected

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Code Reading
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• comprehension
• précis
• descriptive dry runs
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• important to write answer

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-A.A. Milne

• "Sometimes, when you area Bear of very very
  Little Brain,and you think of Things,you find
  sometimes that a Thing which seemed very
  Thingishinside you is quite different when it
  gets out into the openand has other
  peoplelooking at it."

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Code Writing

•  steal from creative writing
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• telegram technique
• leads on to stubs
• renga / exquisite corpse
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Prewriting

• journalling
• free writing
• image streaming
• lists
• visualization
• brainstorming - individually or as a group
• webbing/mapping/clustering
• graphic organizers
• topic or word chart

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Testing / Debugging

•  program as script
• dynamic lifting off page
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• finger on page
• line by line explanation
• and then .
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• debugging
• war stories
• Dr Watson

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Programs As Text
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• unconcerned with mere functionality
• document meant to communicate with humans
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• layout
• examples of bad layout
• refuse to help until layout ok
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• meaningful names
• Helen Sweetstory poor choice for psychopath
• kenning
• stories of stupid names

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• comments
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• aside to reader
• show dont tell
• celebrity
• Lottery player

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Problems

• story telling too much fun
• one mans meat
• shaggy dog story
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• scalability
• nursery rhymes easy
• childe harolds pilgimage hard
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Problems

• complexity
• see spot run
• out, damned spot!
• seeing dynamic in static
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Objects?

• I do believe,Though I have found them not, that
  there may beWords which are things,
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• (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III)