Home Lambda, the Ultimate TA Benjamin C. Pierce. Using a Proof Assistant to Teach Programming Language Foundations, or, Lambda, the Ultimate TA. April 2008. White paper. In Fall 2007, I taught an introductory course on logic and the theory of programming languages entirely in Coq. The experience was quite demanding â€” for the students and especially for me!â€” but the overall payoff in terms of student engagement and performance on exams far exceeded my hopes. I am now convinced that this is the right way to teach programming language foundations and am working on course materials that will allow the approach to be replicated elsewhere. Just this weekend I talked with someone about E-Learning, and he mentioned "immediate nonjudgmental feedback" as one of the main advantages of using computers in the classroom. In the context of teaching logic and the art of constructing proofs this boils down to using proof-assistants as "personal TAs". This is what Pierce tried to do (Paul will be pleased: Coq was the proof assistant Pierce chose), and this note describes his experiences and conclusions. The teaching materials are available online, if you prefer to look at them and form your own opinion before reading Pierce's conclusions... Comment viewing options Flat list - collapsed Flat list - expanded Threaded list - collapsed Threaded list - expanded Date - newest first Date - oldest first Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.