Assessing Students’ Structured Programming Skills with Java: The “Blue, Berry, and Blueberry” Assignment

Abstract

Executive SummaryJava is an object-oriented programming language. From a software engineering perspective, object-oriented design and programming is used at the architectural design, and structured design and programming is used at the detailed design within methods. As such, structured programming skills are fundamental to more advanced object-oriented programming concepts.Structured programming uses control statements to control the order of execution of a program. In Java, only three forms of control structures are used to implement an algorithm: sequence, selection, and repetition. Sequence structures are a built-in feature: statements run in the order they are listed in the program. Selection structures include single-selections, double-selections, and multiple selections. Repetition structures are implemented in three ways: while statement, for statement, and do…while statement. These simple control structures can be combined into more complex algorithms in only two ways -stacking and nesting.