You shouldn't underestimate the novice. The professors who do such weeder classes will have the data though, so you don't have to believe anyone's experiences i

You shouldn't underestimate the novice. The professors who do such weeder classes will have the data though, so you don't have to believe anyone's experiences if you can instead ask a professor... For what it's worth though I'll add to the sibling comments and state in my experience too prior programming experience is less correlative than you seem to think. (I had it, though I quickly found out after my first week "I thought I knew C, I do not know C.") Those who have been subjected to such programs can also probably agree that the filtering of the first semester (and there is a filter, but again we think it's a fair one not dependent on prior programming experience or other such privilege) ends up normalizing everyone, for the benefit of everyone. For the people who started at 0, they're now Somewhere nearby everyone else, ready for the next (harder) material, and for people who started with some "advantages" they've discovered they... are also now Somewhere, not Somewhere Else ahead of everyone like they might have been at the very start. In these sorts of programs, people with prior experience find that they couldn't sleep through their classes and get A's like they might have pulled off in high school, their advantages were not actually that significant after all, and indeed some from-nothings can and do perform better than they. For anyone who just wants access to the software industry's wealth, I'd encourage them to ignore college entirely. There may be a case-by-case basis to consider college, especially if you need economic relief now in the form of scholarships/grants/loans only accessible through the traditional college protocol, but in general, avoid. (If you want something besides just access to the wealth, you have more considerations to make.)