Teaching C programming in context: a joint effort between the Computer Systems, Embedded Computing and Programming Challenges courses

In this Innovative Practice Category Full Paper we describe a one-week introduction to the C language, designed as a joint effort between three advanced courses of a Computer Engineering curriculum: “Computer Systems”, “Embedded Development”, and “Programming Challenges”. Most of the recent discussions on Programming Languages and Learning has been centered around which languages are best suited for introductory courses, with Python and Java arising as the most popular choices. However, many important subjects, such as operating systems, embedded programming, and dynamically allocated data structures require knowledge of lower level programming languages. We describe in this paper an intensive and integrated activity where we teach the C programming language in the first week of three courses. Differently from previous approaches, our objective is not to train proficient C developers in the least amount of time. Instead, we present just enough of C so that students can focus on the concepts of the courses instead of syntax or tooling. At the end of the week, students take a quiz focused on reading and writing elementary C programs. Preliminary analysis of the results are encouraging with respect to learning goals. We also present an analysis of the planning and execution of the activity.