It's my opinion that CS first-year courses are a wreck. The system is broken. To get competent in programming seems to take about two years. To teach computer

It's my opinion that CS first-year courses are a wreck. The system is broken. To get competent in programming seems to take about two years. To teach computer science/software engineering concepts in any form of depth (besides a simple, 'yo, here's X, here are 5 datapoints about X for the test', requires knowing something about programming. That means that to seriously teach data structures, algorithms, software engineering, computer organization/architecture, programming languages, all carries with it the pre-req of years of work. So students have massive issues! I believe that it is indubitable that the best way forward is to have an optional programming track added to high school education. But we've all heard the high school programing-teacher horror stories. Add to that the idiocies perpetrated in the name of 'students must know computers' (Oh, look, Little Bobby Can Use Word). So that's probably not realistic. What might be realistic is sketching out a college curriculum that uses a step function in terms of winnowing out students. E.g., the spring courses are hard, the fall courses are easy. That would help move things along better. Yet, the fundamental issue is that a 4-year college degree seems to be insufficient to prepare students from knowing zilch to being hireable, without some pretty heavy investment on the student's part. Outside of software and music, I have never heard of this scenario for any college degree. I hope that I am wrong, that these two majors are not unusual.