Conceptual Models of a Program?

retsofaj queries: "Almost all of the introductory programming books I've looked at focus on syntax, with possible digressions into a bit of semantics. What I haven't found are any great discussions that go beyond syntax and semantics and make it all the way to conceptual models. My goal is to develop a set of resources that can be used in an introductory course that teaches students programming starting with conceptual models, as opposed to starting with syntax."

"What I mean by conceptual models are how you think about what a program is (if a program can be anything!). Examples would be (all prefaced by "a program is made up of..."):

• flowcharts (structured programming)
• arrangements of opaque things sending messages to each other (OO)
• transformations of data structures (Wirth's view)
• state machines
• a knowledgebase (Prolog, etc.)
• algebraic operations on sets (Functional languages)

Of course this is just the list I've come up with off the top of me head. My questions for the community are therefore:

1. Who/Where/How are the different models of a program being taught?
2. What conceptual models do you use when programming (and where would I go to find out about them)?

I acknowledge that some of these are covered by UML, but UML seems biased towards the object model of a program, which seems to exclude things like knowledgebases and functional approaches."

Comments

Experience!!!

[LinuxCumShot]

Experience is the only way to learn... write a program and its shitty, rewrite it and its less shitty... rewrite it again. Learn from your mistakes. You can't learn to program without practice. bling bling!!!

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

[alacqua]

Its been quite a while and a new edition since I read this book for a computer science class, but as I reacall the main thrust of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs was to focus on computer science concepts in a somewhat introductory class with a minimum of syntax. It uses the Scheme dialect of Lisp which, although it was quite alien to most of the students, does not force the programmer to get bogged down in lots of syntax rules and is quite powerful. I think the author(s) explicitly stated as a goal to get right into concepts and let the student absorb the syntax along the way. And you can read it online in addition to purchasing it at the bookstore.

I'm sure many people here are already familiar with it, but if you're not it's worth a look.