CUTE-the design and evolution of a first year programming environment

A first computer science course should give students an appreciation of software engineering principles and not merely teach programming skills in isolation. This is a difficult task, especially within the constraints imposed by a semester system. We report the evolution of the Canterbury University Teaching Environment (CUTE) which we have used successfully since 1993 to support our first year programming courses. CUTE provides novice programmers with a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to important software development tools and services while shielding them from the underlying Unix system. This not only allows students to focus on core material within the constraints of the semester system but also simplifies administration