Intelligent vs. unintelligent programming systems for novices

The approach presented concentrates on integrating intelligent and unintelligent approaches to come up with an environment that helps novices develop not only problem-solving skills, but also an accurate conceptual and mental model of the programming process. DISCOVER, an intelligent discovery program system supports novices in an initial unintelligent free discovery programming phase and in a subsequent intelligent guided discovery programming phase. In the initial phase, novices explore, observe, and discover the dynamic behavior of individual programming concepts and whole programs as well as of the national machine to build the underlying conceptual programming knowledge. In the subsequent phase, novices compose together programming concepts and language constructs, observed and discovered in the initial phase, to solve given problems under explicit intelligent guidance of system domain expert to transform their programming knowledge into programming skill. Several design issues and decisions that have influenced the development of DISCOVER are discussed