Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare the effect of different representations while teaching basic algorithmic concepts to novice programmers. Design/methodology/approach: A learning activity was designed and mediated with two conceptually different learning environments, each one used by a different group. The first group used the…

Introductory courses in computer science at colleges and universities have undergone significant changes in 20 years. This article provides an overview of the history of introductory computer science (FORTRAN, ANSI flowchart symbols, BASIC, data processing concepts, and PASCAL) and its future (robotics and C++). (PEN)

Software design is still a craft; techniques are based on the way things have been done, not on basic theorems or design principles. Suggests that academic software design needs to be more like a science or technology and that a taxonomy of design solutions or classification method is required. Describes two case studies. (MLW)

Describes collaboration between the University of California at Berkeley and four other universities to develop interoperable servers containing each participant's Computer Science Technical Reports and to make them available over the Internet using standard protocols. The proposed library architecture, approaches to indexing and retrieval, and…