Skip to main content
CS Teaching Tips

Main navigation

  • Browse All Tips
  • Tags
  • 3D
  • About
  • Rate Tips
  • Tip Sheets

Have students design an anagram solver in Prolog or Java to introduce recursive backtracking.

  • The final product is fun for students to play around with and demonstrates how powerful a short program can be.
    • Note from the CS Teaching Tips Team: visit the Wikipedia entry on recursive backtracking for more information.
  • For the full assignment, visit Stanford’s nifty assignment page.

More about this tip

Tags

  • Java
  • Other Programming Language
  • CS 2
  • Programming Concepts
External Source
Stanford's Nifty Assignment by Stuart Reges
Other Tips By
Other Tips By Stuart Reges

Similar tips

Use Python as an introductory language rather than Java or C to allow students to focus on problem-solving more than syntax.
Distinguish the differences between print statements and return statements to help students understand that these elements are not related because this conflation can cause a lot of confusion.
Misconception: Students who first learn object-oriented programming in Python don’t realize they need to explicitly define instance variables in Java because this is done implicitly in Python.

For more information or to report a bug, contact us at admin@csteachingtips.org. Built with Bootstrap. Powered by Drupal.

Privacy Policy