Early courses should enable a student, who has seen enough to want to pursue something further, to do that. Once you know what you want to do, you can slog thro

Early courses should enable a student, who has seen enough to want to pursue something further, to do that. Once you know what you want to do, you can slog through the muck of non-IDE programming because you’re motivated. Not everybody comes in with that much motivation. I did the slog part before I went to university, but there were people who, at the age of 21, decided to try CS, and did the intro courses. Thank goodness for Eclipse, that an English major can feasibly learn enough in a semester not to back out. Not everyone wants to Go Build Real World Programs, either. Please let’s not raise the bar to exclude anyone who isn’t already and won’t soon be hooked up to a terminal speaking in tongues and reciting the fast inverse square root incantations of their forebears.