When I studied electrical engineering, we first had the usual intro to programming and a C class, for many students - that was the first time they had ever code

When I studied electrical engineering, we first had the usual intro to programming and a C class, for many students - that was the first time they had ever coded. There must have been a 40/40/20 split between hate/tolerate/love. But the next semester we had a microcontroller class, which was almost universally loved. We wrote C for AVR microcontrollers, and the projects were varied. I remember when we were learning about signal modulation, some of the students hacked together a very rudimentary mono synth. Fun stuff all around, maybe my favorite class in undergrad. On the other hand, I also had programming in HS - it was a Java class, focusing on OOP. The teacher was a retired programmer who had worked on "enterprise" style code, and so we learned Java that way. While he was a very good teacher, the material was just...quite boring. No fun projects, lots and lots of design patterns.