[nxobject]

I wonder whether it's easier at small liberal arts colleges – my alma mater has a second-semester course teaching SML, Go, and PDP-11 assembler.

The issue is that "CS 110" gets used by a lot of STEM students in other departments that require computational methods and statistical tools, and that require you get to a CS course taught by actual computer scientists. I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing that you'll need CS 101 before a higher-level biology elective that needs R!