[fpig]

You actually managed to change my mind and I now agree C isn't a good first language. Mixing C with data structures / algorithms in the very first programming course is probably not a good idea for the reasons you mention.

Although I am kind of miffed by the last sentence, I admit I'm one of the people who programmed WAY before college but in my experience most CS majors who didn't simply didn't choose to do so, as opposed to having lacked the opportunity to do so; you're dismissing the thousands of hours spent coding as a child (more than most CS majors invest in programming during college...) without the internet or anyone to teach me anything as "opportunity"

[slavik81]

Why stop expectations for self-study at the programming part of the degree program? Math textbooks are available from any library. Rather than continuing mathematics from where high school left off, we could skip past the beginner stuff. The students who really care about computer science will have already learned the basics of discrete math, linear algebra and theory of computation.

[fpig]

Where did you get the idea that I said we should skip anything or that there should be "expectations" for self-study?

I have an issue with someone dismissing thousands of hours of invested effort as "having an opportunity". And the same is of course true for someone who went to the library and learned first year math.

[slavik81]

My apologies. I misunderstood you.

[fhood]

I didn't "choose" to program before college because I didn't decide to major in CS until I applied to college. And I suspect that unless "WAY" means high-school, you programmed before college because of your parents.

[fpig]

Nah my parents are barely computer-literate even today. I found QBASIC that came with DOS when I was like 10 which had the source code for 2 simple games and decided I wanted to learn how to make stuff like that. A few years later I read about Linux somewhere and found someone who baked and mailed me Slackware on CDs for a small fee so then I had gcc