Introductory Programming using Processing

摘要

For the past two years, we have used the Processing programming language to teach our introductory programming (CS1) course at Doane College. Processing [10] is a freely-available programming language derived from Java. The language is designed to allow programmers to easily add graphics, animation, sound, and user interaction to their programs. These characteristics make the language an excellent choice to teach during a first programming course, particularly at a small liberal arts college. This paper describes the philosophy of our course, details why we are using Processing, illustrates several concrete examples of assignments and projects we have used, and presents, subjectively, the impact teaching with Processing has had on our students.