The principle of vaccination in teaching [of software development]

This paper describes a very natural teaching mechanism that the authors have incorporated in their higher education curriculum. Any parent knows that some children are very difficult to persuade not to touch hot objects. The more you warn them, the more your offspring is attracted by the burning candle. The thing to do is, let the child touch the flame and it will avoid all hot objects henceforth. The trick is to control the experience in order to keep the damage as small as possible. The authors have observed the same stubborn attitude of students toward certain subjects. In their experience, good programming style is one of those things that need to be learned the hard way. They therefore let the students first experience bad programming and then make them start over, this time employing a proper approach. Their concept has not only been successful regarding improved programming manners, but has also considerably increased the popularity of the laboratory.