Components-first approaches to CS1/CS2

摘要

Among the many ways to focus CS1/CS2 content, two have been published that emphasize concepts of component-based software engineering. Courses based on these two instances of a "components-first" approach are remarkably similar in several crucial respects--which is surprising because they were developed independently and with very different objectives. Indeed, the two versions are based on virtually the same principles for content organization, and they share many common features that are unusual for CS1/CS2. Yet, they are notably different in other ways. Detailed analysis of similarities and differences suggests that it might be possible to transfer some of their claimed and documented advantages to other approaches within the programming-first paradigm for CS1/CS2, by rearranging the content of such courses in accord with the underlying principles of the components-first approach.