by Eugene Wallingford
and Ralph Johnson

For a number of years, software educators and practitioners have been documenting patterns that all beginning programmers need to know, dubbed elementary patterns. The result has a been a number of papers addressing different elements of novice programming, including repetition, selection, recursion, code layout, and basic OO concepts such as substitution and delegation. These small pattern collections cover several areas but are not yet complete on their own, and they do not cover all of the areas that an introductory computer science course might cover.  Among the missing topics are the use of collections such as arrays or vectors, parameters and return types, and class design.

This Hot Topic will fill in the gaps in the current elementary patterns literature. Participants will write and workshop patterns that either complete an existing set of patterns or address a currently uncovered area of introductory computing instruction. Our goal is to produce a draft of a much more complete text that a CS1 instructor could use in teaching an introductory CS course.

For more on this Hot Topic, please see the workshop home page: http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/patterns/elementary/chiliplop03/cfp.html

and feel free to contact the workshop organizers: