NDLI: Soloway's Rainfall Problem Has Become Harder

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Simon
Copyright Year	2013
Description	Author affiliation: Fac. of Sci. & Inf. Technol., Univ. of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia (Simon)
Abstract	Discussing the use of plans in programming and in programming education, Soloway describes a programming task that has come to be known as the rainfall problem. This problem was used in a number of empirical experiments in the 1980s and 1990s, and was generally recognised as being quite difficult for student programmers. This paper reports that when the rainfall problem was recently used as an examination question in an introductory programming course, the students performed extremely poorly on it. These students are presumably no better than the many students who have been set this problem in the past, but it also appears that the problem has become harder than it was 20 years ago. For example, the problem assumes that loop-controlled keyboard input is standard, whereas in many programming environments nowadays the standard has become event-driven GUI input. As a consequence of this change, students are less likely to be familiar with loop-controlled keyboard input and with the use of a sentinel to terminate input, another feature of the rainfall problem. While there is potential value in comparing the performance of today's students with that in the literature of past decades, it is important to consider changes in technology that might impose a different level of challenge on the same problem.
Starting Page	130
Ending Page	135
File Size	244339
Page Count	6
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781467356275
e-ISBN	9780769549606
DOI	10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.44
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2013-03-21
Publisher Place	China
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Context Programming education Education Soloway Keyboards Rainfall Arrays Indexes Programming profession
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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