When I read your post ,it sent me back to read the Introduction to
Nicklaus Wirth's original "Pascal user Manual and Report" where the
opening paragraph says:
"The development of the language Pascal is based on two principal aims.
The first is to make available a language suitable to teach programming
as a systematic discipline based on certain fundamental concepts clearly
and naturally reflected by the language. The second is to develop
implementations of this language which are both reliable and efficient
on presently available (1975) computers".
Certainly the intent was a very good match for what you want and IMHO
that intent was fully realised.
If you can find it, I would recommend getting hold of a copy of what is
now an ancient text "Pascal - An Introduction to Methodical Programming
- Findlay and Watt - ISBN 0 273 01220 7 (Original Edition) now
978-1857283648". First published 1978. This used to be the definitive
text for learning Pascal and somewhat to my surprise still seems to be
available from Amazon in its 3rd Edition.
When I looked down through the content list the order of play and
presentation still seems just right for a first course in programming.
It does not deal with Object Oriented programming or even "Units". ISO
standard Pascal will still some time away but that anyway should be the
next semester.
I would also caution against starting on GUI programming too early. If
the students don't have a grasp of fundamentals then they will get lost
very quickly. Perhaps the best approach is at the end of each subject to
translate the simple procedural program they have been working on into a
GUI program as a whole class exercise.
From having myself developed many courses in Data Communications over
the years, I would also always try and make sure the students understand
the context, the background to what they are doing and why.
Somehow you need to get Boolean Algebra in there as well. Findlay and
Watt give a primer on this in chapter 5, which is probably about the
right stage after having done the basics. And then, of course, there are
Turing Machines...
Have fun
Tony Whyman
MWA
On 12/10/16 19:10, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:
Hello everyone,
I am a professor of "introduction to programming". Currently we are
working with matlab and c.
Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the
students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications
and usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more
modern?".
I recommended that we should use Pascal in General and Lazarus in
particular to teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my
surprise the idea was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions
about how to prepare the module starting from zero. Students do not
know how to program and I need to include subjects as: variable
declaration, operations, if, while, for, functions and procedure,
arrays and multidimensional arrays.
I would love to know what you think about making the transition from
console to GUI.
This is an exciting opportunity I'd love to make it right.
Regards
--
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