It's difficult to separate out the all-important "I did/didn't spend a bunch of time in my teens programming" factor, and if she is getting some attention to fi

It's difficult to separate out the all-important "I did/didn't spend a bunch of time in my teens programming" factor, and if she is getting some attention to fix the temporary deficit that this causes, so much the better. As someone else points out, a lot of people come into CS with a huge head start (often one that stops working some point in 2nd or 3rd year, in my experience on both sides of the classroom). The question becomes: when does the strategy of being the one person in the class saying "I don't understand. Please explain again/better" start to be problematic? When you're still consuming 40% of the attention of your TAs in a 2nd or 3rd year course? When you're asking questions about things all of the rest of the class understands and things are grinding to a halt for everyone else? When you're the team member who needs someone else to design your algorithm for you for every single task? There has to be an end to it somewhere.