[908B64B197]

> Edit: You'll never get all the kids to leave the class loving CS, but you can usually get all of them to leave the class not feeling frustrated by it.

There's nothing wrong with kids not enjoying CS at the end of the class. It's an elective, meaning some of them are there because they aren't sure they'll enjoy the subject and want to test the water. Your (I'm sure excellent) teaching probably saved a few from enrolling in CS and then dropping out or wasting a year switching majors.

This might be somewhat controversial, but I believe the point of early CS education should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (if you can break it down as a series of steps) and some are incredibly hard. I think it's normal it'll click for some students and not others (intro to programming at the college level is reputed to be completely bimodal as well). [0]

[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f...

[MBCook]

> …should be to expose students to computational thinking and get them a sense that some problems are easy to solve with computers (*if you can break it down as a series of steps*)

Emphasis mine. This bit, taught through CS or otherwise, is so incredibly useful. I’ve seen so many people throughout my life if all ages run into an issue and have no idea how to approach it because it was ‘too big’. Internalizing that can be so incredibly useful.