A lecture/laboratory approach to the first course in programming

The first course in Computer Science ha s been the center of discussion for many years, a s many students and educators have become dissatisfied with the conventional teaching methods . Based on the training required by early computer specialists, we have traditionally concerned ourselve s with teaching a programming language without specifically addressing ourselves to such concepts a s problem solving, algorithm development, storage usage, etc . This approach yielded satisfactory results while programming students were drawn onl y from those fields which dealt with problem solvin g within their own disciplines e .g ., engineering , mathematics . However, prospective programming students are now being drawn from a wider range o f disciplines . The instructor in the first programming course is no longer able to ignore the concepts just mentioned, while assuming that student s have learned these ideas in other courses .