Learning to Program with Alice

Wanda Dann is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research has encompassed program visualization and object-oriented and event-driven programming. She has published papers on the use of program visualization in computer science education for SIGCSE, the Computer Science Education Journal, and related publications. She has been co-PI for three NSF-funded projects. She is an active member of the ITiCSE Visualization Working Group, studying the effectiveness of visualization in computer science education. She has taken on a major leadership role in the international computer science education community, serving as SIGCSE 2004 Program co-Chair and SIGCSE 2005 Symposium co-Chair. Stephen Cooper is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Saint Joseph's University. He taught previously at Rivier College, serving as Computer Science program director. He has also worked at IBM as a systems programmer. Dr. Cooper's research interests lie in the semantics of programming languages as well as in program visualization. He is the author or co-author of a dozen articles, and has been the principal investigator for several National Science Foundation and private grants. Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, where he is the co-director of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).  He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He has done Sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering  (WDI) and Electronic Arts (EA), and has consulted with Disney on user interfaces for interactive theme park attractions and with Google on user interface design. Dr. Pausch is the author or co-author of five books and over 70 articles, is the director of the Alice software project, and has been in zero gravity.

Table of Contents           iii

Preface to the Instructor      

Part I: Introduction to Alice                   

1 Getting Started with Alice               

    1-1 Introduction to Alice      

1-2 Alice Concepts   

Tips & Techniques 1:  Special Effects: Text and 2D Graphic Images     

2 Program Design and Implementation                      

2-1 Scenarios and Storyboards                  

2-2 A First Program   

Exercises 

Summary 

3 Programming: Putting Together the Pieces           

3-1 Built-in Functions and Expressions                  

3-2 Simple Control Structures

Tips & Techniques 3: Engineering Look and Feel          

Exercises 

Summary 

Part II: Object-oriented and Event-driven Programming Concepts         

4 Classes, Objects, Methods, and Parameters   

4-1 World-level Methods 

4-2 Parameters                  

4-3 Class-level Methods and Inheritance                  

Tips & Techniques 4: Visible and Invisible Objects  

Exercises and Projects                

Summary 123

5 Interaction: Events and Event Handling                    

5-1 Interactive Programming             

5-2 Passing Parameters to Event Handling Methods

Tips & Techniques 5: Events

Exercises and Projects                

Summary

Part III: Using Functions and Control Statements    

6 Functions  and If/Else 

6-1 Functions                

6-2 Execution Control with If/Else and Boolean Functions                

Tips & Techniques 6: Random Numbers and Random Motion  

Exercises and Projects                

Summary 190

7 Repetition: Definite and Indefinite Loops         

7-1 Loops                

7-2 While – An Indefinite Loop      

Tips & Techniques 7: Events and Repetition                

Exercises and Projects                

Summary

8 Repetition:  Recursion  

8-1 Introduction to Recursion                

8-2 Another Flavor of Recursion                

Tips & Techniques 8: Camera and Animation Controls

Exercises and Projects                

Summary

Part IV: Advanced Topics                        

9 Lists and List Processing 

9-1 Lists 

9-2 List Search    

Tips & Techniques 9: Poses 

Exercises and Projects                

Summary

10 Variables and Revisiting Inheritance

10 -1 Variables

10-2 An Array Visualization Using an Index Variable 

Exercises and Projects                

Summary

11 What’s Next?          

Appendix      

Appendix A: Using Alice

Part 1: Running virtual worlds in Alice      

Part 2: Using Popup Menus to Create an Initial Scene                

Appendix B: Managing the Alice Interface                    

Index