TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Harvey Mudd redesigned their intro computer science course to make it more accessible and meaningful to students not already exposed to programming:

To reduce the intimidation factor, the course was divided into two sections — “gold,” for those with no prior experience, and “black” for everyone else. Java, a notoriously opaque programming language, was replaced by a more accessible language called Python. And the focus of the course changed to computational approaches to solving problems across science.

“We realized that we needed to show students computer science is not all about programming,” said Ran Libeskind-Hadas, chairman of the department. “It has intellectual depth and connections to other disciplines.”

The article is about making their computer science program more accessible for women, but I think this applies equally to everyone: make it meaningful and people will get it.