Two members of the Computing Division of the University of Northampton have contributed a chapter to the book Software Industry-Oriented Education Practices and Curriculum Development: Experiences and Lessons edited by Drs. Matthew Hussey, Xiaofei Xu and Bing Wu. ISBN: 978-1609607975 IGI Global to be published later this year. Problems First Gary Hill and Scott Turner ABSTRACT This chapter considers the need to focus initial programming education on problem-solving , in advance of programming syntax and software design methodology. The main vehicle for this approach is simple Lego based robots programmed in Java , followed by the programming of a graphical representation/simulation to develop programming skills. P roblem solving is not trivial (Beaumont & Fox, 2003) and is an important skill, central to computing and engineering. An approach wil...