Teaching CS1 with karel the robot in Java

Abstract

Most current Java textbooks for CS1 (and thus most current courses) begin either with fundamentals from the procedural paradigm (assignment, iteration, selection) or with a brief introduction to using objects followed quickly with writing objects. We have found a third way to be most satisfying for both teachers and students: using interesting predefined classes to introduce the fundamentals of object-oriented programming (object instantiation, method calls, inheritance) followed quickly by the traditional fundamentals of iteration and selection, also taught using the same predefined classes.Karel the Robot, developed by Richard Pattis [6] and well-known to many computer science educators, has aged gracefully and is a vital part of our CS1 curriculum. This paper explains how Karel may be used and the advantages of doing so.