Teacher Note: for loops are more natural

Several researchers have studied how people “naturally” describe programs. In one study, students as young as middle school are shown videos of someone playing a game like “Pokemon” then asked:

“Imagine that you are going to program a computer to make this video game. What do you think you would say to the computer?”

Participants rarely specify iteration like in a while loop. They often say things like “For all the folders, I would…” or “For each of the characters, do this…” Doing something “for all” is pretty common. As we have seen, we can use for loops just like that, e.g., for each item in a list. In general, for loops are closer to how people naturally talk about looping.

But computer science students often make an economic argument to themselves.

“A while loop can do everything that a for loop can, and is more flexible. I’ll just learn that.”

Mark Guzdial, one of the authors of this book, used to teach a 2nd year undergraduate course on Object-oriented Design. He wanted to know how much programming they knew before we got started. One year, he gave them the challenge of writing the program to print the times table, just as you just saw ealier. With a for loop, it’s three lines of code. Out of 75 students, only 15 used a for loop. Every other student used a while loop. Using a while loop is more lines of code, and more opportunities for error. (And many of the students did make errors.) But they were more comfortable with the while loop, because that’s what they had used the most.

Start out using the for loop in your classes as we have done in the prior chapter. It will be easier and more natural for students.

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