It’s funny - I can’t think of an equivalent for that sort of thing in any other major. Of course, most other students don’t go in to their major with as much knowledge and experience as a good portion of CS students do.
All liberal arts degrees at UVA require 2 writing courses. The first course is required to be taken in your first year. The second is strongly encouraged to be taken in your second year.
That feels roughly analogous to a CS department requiring a "*nix skills" course or similar, as most liberal arts degrees require a substantial amount of writing.
I assume music (and possibly some fine arts) would require some background in those subjects. They often require a portfolio or audition before entering the program.
Do engineering programs expect students to have taken calculus?
Though with music (and possibly engineering), you likely have to prove ability prior to being accepted into the program.
You can get accepted to a music degree for some majors such as composition without prior proven knowledge but you'd need to do a summer class or similar to learn music theory. It would be rough if you think to learn in a couple of months what most musicians take years, but a friend of mine managed and 2 decades later he's head of the school.
The one big exception I can think of is the arts. But they usually require an audition or portfolio for acceptance. CS majors take anyone but then not until first week of classes is it clear how much pre-reqs are expected.
Oh, music majors in particular are a really good comparison. Though at least music instruction is available in most US school systems over a span of several years, as an ordinary during-school-hours class. Then again if that's the only instruction you've had, you're probably still starting out (maybe hopelessly) behind those who had private lessons outside of school, who are likely the real intended candidates of such programs, and you might not even be able to get into a good program.
[EDIT] incidentally, the arts are also infamous for being dominated, at a professional level, by kids with artist parents and kids with rich parents (who can bankroll years of private lessons and then years of little-to-no income while paying for access to career-makers) so... there's that.
My freshman year of college I took a music course - 'music 101' or something like that. I'd played sax, then guitar and piano, for ... 5-6 years, could read music, write a bit (notation, etc) - took a music theory class in high school - wanted to dive in more.
Of the 22 people in the class, 21 of them were singers - everyone except me. Much of the class was around singing - singing scales, etc. I saw nothing in the syllabus that required singing, but... you had to learn to sing stuff by sight reading, and... I'm not a singer. It was embarrassing for me (and probably for others). I think I managed to drop out before losing all my money on that, but... frustrating. Could also tell most of these people had had voice lessons for years, and were all taking this class as a way of getting in to theater work, not... to play an instrument.
My experience was the opposite. The learning curve for CS classes is steep, but you can go in with zero knowledge. When I took music theory, there was a hard requirement for vocal training experience and I was rather shocked that such an important and uncommon thing was just taken for granted.
That feels roughly analogous to a CS department requiring a "*nix skills" course or similar, as most liberal arts degrees require a substantial amount of writing.
I assume music (and possibly some fine arts) would require some background in those subjects. They often require a portfolio or audition before entering the program.
Do engineering programs expect students to have taken calculus?
Though with music (and possibly engineering), you likely have to prove ability prior to being accepted into the program.