Discipline Pascal with descriptive environment; precise writing to learn programming and to avoid errors

Abstract

Dijkstra's article “On the cruelty of really teaching computing science” [l] has encouraged me to review my thoughts and experience. In the teaching environments of an introductory programming course (CS1, CS2 and others), I have discovered a mental gap in the minds of some students, which has often led to difficulties in class. A Pascal statement contains highly condensed information. In order to deal with this type of information, the students must apply a certain thinking level. In a Pascal statement, much information is concealed behind the written words. For example, consider a variable in a program. The data type and locality of the variable are not explicitly expressed in a statement. In other words, this condensed information is hiding, e.g. invisible. Hence a degree of the student's ability to focus on it may fade away in his mind. If programming code demands writing precise information in a statement then the student's difficulty may be alleviated because he can see it. This would be an attempt to narrow the gap by writing Discipline Pascal code closer to the precise thinking level. I believe that this proposal would also bring benefits to experienced programmers.