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Computer Science Educators

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    $\begingroup$ This is a very interesting answer. Welcome to Computer Science Educators! My only suggestion is that it might be helpful for you to draw a more direct connection between the question and the answer. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 15:33
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    $\begingroup$ I really like this perspective, and I hadn't quite thought about it stated so simply and cleanly before. (I also don't generally teach absolute beginners, so I don't have a ton of experience having to clarify this particular idea.) This also puts a nice punctuation mark on Bryan R.'s observation, "I prefer to teach while loops as part of my unit on if/else statements since the syntax and thought process are virtually identical." $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 15:54
  • $\begingroup$ While I agree that this is how they are usually implemented. This is back to the structured/un-structured high/low level argument, that you were not here for. (yes I said usually: for example on the ARM — the most popular ≥ 32bit cpu on the planet at this time — conditional and iteration are implemented different at the very low level. For a backward conditional branch of a loop the branch predictor assumes that the branch will happen. For a forward conditional of an if it is assumed not to happen. Arm also has conditional instructions. ) But thanks for contributing. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 16:09
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    $\begingroup$ "The only difference between an IF-Else and a Loop of any kind is whether you branch downward or back to the top" just isn't true. DO...WHILE and LOOP...UNTIL and FOR X UNTIL Y STEP Z are nothing but (very useful) syntactic sugar laid over TEST and BRANCH. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 16:45
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    $\begingroup$ The importance of this answer is that it emphasizes underlying concepts. I think it can help, not only hurt, to teach this first - unstructured control in various forms, and then teach structured control. That presents an excellent opportunity to teach why structured control is preferable. IOW, more or less follow the history -- the history itself evolved the way it did for good reasons. It's not just about teaching the use of a particular language; it's about teaching what's going on - why we do things the way we do. The various iteration constructs did not fall from the sky. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 15:31