I was hoping the "novel" approach would be to use realistic fiction to get students inside the mind of a programmer, using actual languages. A novel has an advantage over an autobiography because the characters can be put in teaching situations in an ideal order. Also, if the author is honest about his own experiences, he will not let the characters self-edit their experience to present a hopelessly optimistic or pessimistic picture of programming.
Natural language is ambiguous, sorry for being misleading; I meant "novel" in the sense of "fresh, not seen before", referring to the more pragmatic paradigm described in the paper.
