The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) Sparks curriculum is an innovative computer science curriculum designed to introduce middle school and early high school students to the world of computer science through functional programming. Developed by the creators of BJC CS Principles (CSP), BJC Sparks presents a simplified yet engaging approach to programming, emphasizing the flow of information through functions. By focusing on functions rather than commands and iteration, BJC Sparks nurtures problem-solving skills and reduces bugs in future programming experiences.

We present our experience with the design and implementation of BJC Sparks, a new introductory computer science curriculum for middle school piloted by ten teachers in the 2021-2022 academic year. Our curriculum is functional-first, using abstraction, functional decomposition, immutable data, and powerful higher-order functions such as map, keep, and combine. Based on a decade of experience teaching thousands of first-time programmers, we believe starting with functions teaches students the habit of solving problems functionally when possible, helping to avoid bugs in later programming experiences.

The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is a CS Principles (CSP) course created at UC Berkeley to reach high school and university nonmajors in computer science. It was chosen for the CSP pilot and endorsed by the College Board as an AP CSP curriculum and PD provider since the first AP CSP exam sitting in 2017. This past year, BJC developed a new course for middle school and early high school that teaches a functional approach to programming, emphasizing iteration and commands, and including exciting projects in graphics, data, and media. In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the BJC middle school and high school curriculum including course materials, teacher resources, and an introduction to Snap!, the chosen visual programming language of BJC. We will not only cover curriculum updates, Snap! updates, BJC for middle school, BJC in other languages, but also dive into labs with hands-on programming. Laptop is required.

This paper shares the design principles of one Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course, Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC), both for schools considering curriculum, and for developers in this still-new field. BJC students not only learn about CS, but do some and analyze its social implications; we feel that the job of enticing students into the field isn't complete until students find programming, itself, something they enjoy and know they can do, and its key ideas accessible. Students must feel invited to use their own creativity and logic, and enjoy the power of their logic and the beauty and elegance of the code by which they express it. All kids need genuine challenge and sensible support so all can have the joy of making-seeing themselves as creators, not just consumers, and seeing that it is their own intellect, not just our instructions, that is the source of that making. Framework standards are woven into a consistent social and intellectual storyline to give the curriculum integrity. Principles guide even our choice of programming language. Learners should focus on the logic and structure of their thinking, not on misplaced semicolons; attention to such syntactic detail is antithetical to broadening participation. We feature recursion and higher-order functions because they beautifully exemplify abstraction, a key idea in CS and the CSP framework. BJC also places significant emphasis on the social implications of computing, balancing fundamental optimism about computing technology with a critical view of specific uses of technology.