Teaching Programming with the Kernel Language Approach

We present the kernel language approach, a new way to teach programming that situates most of the widely-known programming paradigms (including imperative, object-oriented, concurrent, logic, and functional) in a uniform setting that shows their deep relationships and how to use them together. Widely-different practical languages (exemplified by Java, Haskell, Prolog, and Erlang) with their rich panoplies of abstractions and syntax are explained by straightforward translations into closely-related kernel languages, simple languages that consist of small numbers of programmer-significant concepts. Kernel languages are easy to understand and have a simple formal semantics that can be used by practicing programmers to reason about correctness and complexity. We have taught the approach at three universities in courses ranging from second-year undergraduate courses to graduate courses. We are completing a textbook with accompanying materials. As part of a curriculum, the approach naturally complements courses on algorithms & data structures and program design & software engineering. The approach is the fruit of ten years of research by an international team, the Mozart Consortium. 1 Existing Approaches For the purposes of this paper, let us consider a broad definition of computer programming as bridging the gap between specification and running program. This consists in designing the architecture and abstractions of an application and coding them in a programming language. The discipline of programming has two essential parts: a technology and its scientific foundation. The technology consists of tools, techniques, and standards, allowing to do programming. The science consists of a broad and deep theory with predictive power, allowing to understand programming. The science should be practical, that is, able to explain the technology, making it useful for a practicing programmer. Teaching programming means to teach both the science and the technology. Surprisingly, we find that programming is almost never taught in this way. Surveying existing textbooks, we find that programming is taught in three different ways.

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