Learning to program is difficult. To support learning programming, many intelligent tutoring systems for learning programming have been developed. Research has shown that such tutors have positive effects on learning. However, intelligent tutors for learning programming are not widely used. Building an intelligent tutor for a programming language is a substantial amount of work, and utilising it in a course is often hard for a teacher. In this paper we illustrate how to construct strategies for solving programming exercises and how these strategies can be used to automatically support students using an intelligent programming tutor to incrementally develop a program. Using strategies for programming, specifying an exercise becomes relatively easy, and more flexible.