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Segments: An alternative rainfall problem

Part of: JFP Education Matters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2021

PETER ACHTEN Open the ORCID record for PETER ACHTEN [Opens in a new window]
PETER ACHTEN*
Affiliation:
Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, e-mail: P.Achten@cs.ru.nl
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Abstract

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Elliot Soloway’s Rainfall problem is a well-known and well-studied problem to investigate the problem-solving strategies of programmers. Kathi Fisler investigated this programming challenge from the point of view of functional programmers. She showed that this particular challenge gives rise to five different high-level solution strategies, of which three are predominant and cover over 80% of all chosen solutions. In this study, we put forward the Segments problem as an alternative challenge to investigate the problem-solving skills of functional programmers. Analysis of the student solutions, their high-level solution strategies, and corresponding archetype solutions shows that the Segments problem gives rise to seven different high-level solution strategies that can be further divided into 17 subclasses. The Segments problem is particularly suited to investigate problem-solving skills that involve list processing and higher-order functions.

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Type
Education Matters
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 31 , 2021 , e23
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

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