I'm TAing an introductory programming class, and the reason we lose people is because programming can be hard for people to wrap their minds around. Loops are e

I'm TAing an introductory programming class, and the reason we lose people is because programming can be hard for people to wrap their minds around. Loops are easy for you and me, but for a bewildered freshman who's never seen them before, translating a simple problem into actual looping code can seem like an insurmountable brick wall. Ever seen someone write "for" and then stare blankly at the screen for the next half hour? It's painful to watch. (I just got back from helping a bunch of freshmen try to test a number for primality. It was brutal. And we're using a language without all that "public static void main" stuff, so that's not even an issue.)