<p>Thanks, Firehose, for clearing that up - I was just wondering, because I do know of schools where students with little background are expected to achieve alongside those with years of experience, even in an intro class, but the curve is not very generous. In such cases, it is rarely laziness or lack of talent that is in question.</p>
<p>A coworker’s son was at BU Engineering and he had to take a required Java programming course. His courseload was fairly heavy and Java programming was the last thing that I thought would be difficult but that was the course that caused him the most difficulty during the semester. I think that he wound up having to retake it.</p>
<p>My son’s computing 1 course had about 90 labs. Even if you’re good at it, the sheer volume was going to eat up a lot of time. That course is required for a few majors outside of Computer Science and I imagine that students not used to CS labs get shell-shocked.</p>
<p>Regarding code copying: a read through a book on compilers such as Aho, Sethi and Ullman might prove illuminating as to why the names of objects or the order of functions can be squeezed out of program comparisons.</p>