[bunkat]

Of course it's possible but it seems a little odd. Programming is something that anybody can do with a very modest investment. If you're interested in programming, seems strange to have absolutely no prior experience before getting to college.

It's sort of like deciding to be a music major when you've never played an instrument before. How do you know if you even enjoy it before starting down the long path to getting a degree in it?

[jimmaswell]

>Programming is something that anybody can do with a very modest investment.

That's highly debatable. A lot of people including my old compsci professor seem to believe it's largely something someone either can learn to understand or can't. I've noticed myself that students seemed to either "get" programming or not, both in a class I took in high school and the compsci class at my first college. This article on the issue is worth reading: http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr...

[DanBC]

The author of the study linked in that blog has retracted it and apologised for it and said he was wrong.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-...

[douche]

It'd be good to have another large-scale study to try to replicate, because, while the results where, err, politically incorrect, they fit too well with what an extremely large number of people have observed...

[grumble1234]

Yep, same experience here. I remember spending about a week explaining some basic programming concepts to a very smart lady (PhD in biostatistics) and it just wouldn't click. For some people it's easy and for some people it doesn't jive with the way they think about things.

[bunkat]

I wasn't saying anybody can become competent in it (and have no opinion on your particular point), but anybody can definitely try it out to see if they enjoy it. It has an extremely low barrier to entry compared to a lot of other majors.

[tnecniv]

>Programming is something that anybody can do with a very modest investment.

Yeah, but most people don't know that. Sure, us nerds figured it out, but most people are shocked that I learned to code at 13. I thought it wasn't that difficult. I don't think I'm smarter than most, I just wasn't scared off by the technical details.

[bunkat]

If you're not technical enough to type 'learn to program' into Google then I'm not sure how far you'll make it into a CS program. Back in the 80's and early 90's, sure it was a struggle. I remember reading out of date BASIC books trying to figure out how to load my code from floppies, now that was a bit of a headache.

These days you can be be learning to code using any number of slick web sites in about 5 minutes.

[slavik81]

I tried learning programming quite a few times back in the '00s, but none of it really made sense until I took the intro to programming course in university.

I was too focused on my high school academics (and goofing off) to devote enough time to properly learn to program. Once software became a part of my academics, I found that I got much more better explanations of how things fundamentally work. I also finally had more time to practice.