This is absolutely my view as well. I ran a course along the same lines for MD and PhD students last summer and it went quite well. One aspect that I think sho

This is absolutely my view as well. I ran a course along the same lines for MD and PhD students last summer and it went quite well. One aspect that I think should be emphasized more is feeling comfortable with the command line. A lot of science-focused courses put you in an IDE and never have you muck around in bash, which I think is a big mistake for the long term usefulness of the course.