Purpose-first Programming: A Programming Learning Approach for Learners who Care Most About What Code Achieves

Becoming "a programmer"is associated with gaining a deep understanding of programming language semantics. However, as more people learn to program for more reasons than creating software, their learning needs differ. In particular, end-user programmers and conversational programmers often care about code's purpose, but don't wish to engage with the low-level details of precisely how code executes. I propose the creation of scaffolding that allows these learners to interact with code in an authentic way, highlighting code's purpose while providing support that avoids the need for low-level tracing knowledge. This scaffolding builds on theories of programming plans.