An Expression-Oriented Approach to Programming Education

Learning programming language syntax is considered an obstacle in programming education. However, we believe it is an overlooked opportunity to exploit obvious synergies with Math. As evidenced around the world, middle and high school students know the syntax required to compute simple expressions, without previous exposure to programming languages. We make the case for an “expressions first” approach to facilitate the development of computational thinking. Our approach has the benefit of integrating directly with Math, which in turn reinforces the teaching of other STEM subjects as well as non-STEM ones. We report early results of an ongoing trial using a visual computing environment that supports this approach.