I have been thinking about this since last night, and here are my thoughts. I totally agree with Amjad on avoiding framing programming as an intuitive activity.

I have been thinking about this since last night, and here are my thoughts. I totally agree with Amjad on avoiding framing programming as an intuitive activity. But on the other hand, framing it as a hard intellectual activity for beginners is also troublesome. I am facing this now as I am helping my younger brother in his Computer Science B.Sc. program, and taking different isolated courses for few months two or three times a year makes academic/intellectual studying for this industry without experience a hassle. I keep listening to him and one of the most common complains he says is: "I don't know how all these - OS, Automata, Java, Web, Algorithms and Math - pieces fit together." I think I can relate to this frustration/confusion because I went through it when I was obtaining my B.Sc. degree but I cannot exactly remember nor reproduce how I overcame this phase, or made sense of "it" all (for lack of a better term). Can you folks help me with this? How would you guide or help a beginner like this person in programming?