It is the view of the author that a student can obtain much more from her or his first course in CAADD if some fundamental concepts are covered specifically and dramatically, rather than assumed or conveyed by osmosis. On the other hand, one does not want to significantly delay the teaching of he principal objective: how to use a computer as a partner in design and production. The answer to meeting these two divergent objectives is two-fold: (1) careful organization with computer based tutorials, and (2) integration of architectonic lessons during the introduction.

The objectives of he initial five weeks are (1) to demystify computers, (2) teach the fundamental concepts of computer systems relating to hardware (disks, cpu, memory, display), and software (programs, data, files), (3) illustrate programming and program design, and (4) convey the concept of discrete symbol manipulation and its relation to graphics and text.