Questions tagged [abstraction]

This tag is for all questions on using and teaching abstraction, such as data abstraction. It is also appropriate for questions related to using abstraction to build and improve program structure, i.e. functional abstraction.

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45 votes
21 answers
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Real life examples of 0-indexing

It can be perplexing for students to begin counting at 0 when they enter a CS class. I made it a point over and over to talk about "Day 0" and "Week 0" in the opening days and weeks just to build ...
Peter's user avatar
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12 votes
7 answers
754 views

Lesson Idea: Arrays, Pointers, and Syntactic Sugar

One of the most challenging concepts to instill in new CS students is 0-indexing (indeed, the pedagogy of this fact probably merits its own discussion). Another difficult topic -- although a slightly ...
Peter's user avatar
  • 9,092
9 votes
5 answers
809 views

How do you assess students' understanding of abstraction?

We've just uploaded a video of a presentation Simon Peyton Jones and I did about Project Quantum to CAS TV. Project Quantum is an attempt to crowd-source low-stakes formative assessment items for ...
Miles's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
186 views

Encourage students to learn and use advanced design

I mentor an FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) team, and they program in java. The team members who work programming the robot are using an extension1 library which they themselves write. The library ...
ItamarG3's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
231 views

How to embed TIC-80 into Computer science 101 course

I'm planning to design an introductory course to CS and programming for kids of 8-12 grade and see that we have Scratch for catching an eye in the beginning and getting instant result on place. But I ...
paus's user avatar
  • 233
3 votes
4 answers
199 views

Physical analogy to introduce a Delegate in .Net programming

Delegates are strange beasts (think Pointers with aspirations) and I was planning to introduce them using a physical metaphor: a power strip. The power strip connects to an 'event' (wall socket) and ...
user3103's user avatar