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My favorite programming problem to teach: Digit length (2019)
A function to return the number of digits in an input (natural) number provides many learning opportunities for a new programmer
Though many of the lessons may be obvious to those with software engineering experience, the conclusions therein can take a long time to reach for students new to the discipline, which is why I make a point to discuss them early in the course. This mindset prepares students to learn about contracts and formal methods, topics taught in 15-122 and 15-150 (the following courses in the Carnegie Mellon introductory computer science series). If my job is done correctly, students will leave the small group session understanding that clarifying details about the specification before writing code is the difference between unexpected errors and well-defined behavior.
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