As an engineering student at Pitt, all freshmen engineers were required to take an introduction to programming course. I found that the usefulness of this course largely depended on the content. If the professor was concentrating on teaching computer science, students were generally disinterested. If the professor focuses on the applicability of computer science to engineering and the sciences, I think the course would be far more useful. Later in the program, we were exposed to a significant amount of Matlab, and I think that struck a closer balance of code/concepts.
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As an engineering student at Pitt, all freshmen engineers were required to take an introduction to programming course. I found that the usefulness of this course largely depended on the content. If the professor was concentrating on teaching computer science, students were generally disinterested. If the professor focuses on the applicability of computer science to engineering and the sciences, I think the course would be far more useful. Later in the program, we were exposed to a significant amount of Matlab, and I think that struck a closer balance of code/concepts.