SP/k: a system for teaching computer programming

ABSTRACT

SP/k is a compatible subset of the PL/I language that has been designed for teaching programming. The features of the SP/k language were chosen to encourage structured problem solving by computers, to make the language easy to learn and use, to eliminate confusing and redundant constructs, and to make the language easy to compile. The resulting language is suitable for introducing programming concepts used in various applications, including business data processing, scientific calculations and non-numeric computation. SP/k is actually a sequence of language subsets called SP/1, SP/2, … SP/8. Each subset introduces new programming language constructs while retaining all the constructs of preceding subsets. Each subset is precisely defined and can be learned or implemented without the following subsets.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
PL/I, SP/k, community colleges, high schools, introductory computing, minicomputers, programmer education, programming language design, teaching programming, universities