This, so much this. A lot of students get quite the scare when they realize that, gasp, a computer science degree is largely about doing science. While we do have introductory programming courses here, they're mostly seen as giving students the basic toolkit with which they will do their actual degree, a bit like how a physics degree has a few introductory pure math courses. Many courses I've taken don't even have programming at all in them, and some of those were very enjoyable at that!
In the end, the ones who realized that a comp sci degree isn't about learning programming tend to be those who do best at programming. I've met students who'd never used C++ and picked it up in a matter of hours. Perhaps they didn't have as much refinement as someone who's been doing it for 10+ years, but they understood that you can easily transfer high-level notions (ie. the focus of a comp sci degree) to any language.
Perhaps the pitfall of this is for the mediocre students, who don't realize this. They tend to have difficulty adjusting to another language than the one they were taught with.