+1 I also started a CS program in '95, with practically no previous programming experience. (10 PRINT "HENRIK IS THE BEST", 20 GOTO 10 doesn't count) One thin

+1 I also started a CS program in '95, with practically no previous programming experience. (10 PRINT "HENRIK IS THE BEST", 20 GOTO 10 doesn't count) One thing our university did though was that the introduction course was in Scheme, which evened the playing field immensely, because most of the kids who could program were self-taught in Pascal or C, and where pretty stumped when confronted with a functional programming language. But my university's approach didn't help the abysmal graduation numbers either, there were so many classmates that dropped out during the first year. A bunch dropped out because the programme was an engineering programme, and they failed the math parts, but did good on the CS parts. Most of those switched to other programmes that were more pure CS and were successful. But there were a lot of students who just lacked that elusive thing that makes a person a good programmer. There's been a lot of studies, and lot of previous discussions on HN of those studies, but the jury is still out, we have no idea how to effectively screen people for programming ability. The only thing we can do is toss them into an education and see if it sticks. The original article asks: > Isn’t it reasonable to expect that people with an aptitude for math, physics, and engineering will also have an aptitude for CS? And the answer is a resounding no. Funnily enough, this whole thing ties into the problems of recruiting good programmers, another HN staple topic. We can't tell if someone will be a good programmer before an education, and we can't even quickly tell if someone is a good programmer after an education, or even after years of working in the industry! If there was a quick way of identifying good programmers, we wouldn't be in this mess.