Computer literacy via Scheme and web programming

We describe an approach to introducing non-science majors to programming and computation in part by teaching them applets, servlets, and groupware applications. The course uses a dialect of didactic Scheme that is implemented in, and tightly integrated with, Java. The declarative nature of our approach allows non-science majors with no programming background to develop surprisingly complex web applications in about half a semester. This level of programming provides a context for a deeper understanding of computation than is usually feasible in a Computer Literacy course.