Saw this article in one of the ACM blogs that cited a recent study in an educational psychology journal on how teaching introductory Cs students to program by having them write code actually has a detrimental effect. More details here . I absolutely disagree with the author that this study has implications in CS! First of all it cites a study done with teaching algebra so it is a different domain. I think that the problem is that there is too little programming going on rather than too much. I also wonder of anyone has considered that an introductory programming class probably has a mix of two very different types of students - one just exploring CS as one of many career options, the other the kind that took their dad's computer apart in the garage and started programming at age 8. The latter kind still have to take the introductory class because of degree requirements but now it gives you a class sample that's skewed and hard to make any conclusions about. If everyone that to