Methodology first and language second: a way to teach object-oriented programming

C++ is a very successful object-oriented language. It is a required language for more and more students. It takes great effort and practice for these students to learn how to program in C++ and how to make object-oriented programs. One potential failure is that they have learned programming in C++ but do not know how to program in an object-oriented (OO) style. To avoid such failures, this paper proposes that first an object-oriented methodology is taught, and then the language itself. A six-step approach to teach the OO methodology is presented, followed by some innovative ways to teach different mechanisms in C++. In this way, students can master both object-oriented programming and C++ programming. The proposed teaching method is applicable to teaching other languages like Java and C#.

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