Explaining and Understanding LOGO Programs, a Discipline of Learning Computer Programming

Usually students and teachers have to speak about their computer programs while teaching or learning programming. Also software engineers have to explain their programs to their colleagues during the software development process. But "how to explain programs " is usually not taught and there exists no systematic methodology to do it. We show in this article how small LOGO programs can be explained systematically. We distinguish between the operational and the descriptive view on programs. It is argued that the question "why does the program the desired task? " is the most important part of explaining a program. Teachers and students should learn to use specific elements of explaining programs so that they can make better progress in learning programming