[Goladus]

It looks like the rationale for Berkeley's change is different than MIT. At MIT the change was made because "being a better programmer" in the classical sense was deemed to be less important than other aspects of engineering. If you look at the new MIT course, you'll see that it starts with an intense overview of python and programming techniques and then moves on to apply those techniques in a variety of relevant engineering-related areas. This makes sense in the context of the MIT major given that the choice to focus on software development doesn't have to be made until later on.

(edit: also there's an interview floating around somewhere that talks about the rationale being that modern programming is different in the sense that it more often requires ability to figure out existing libraries as much as an ability to compose well-structured programs.)