Comment Yeah, let's lower the standards (Score 1) 307
I had some programming background when I took CS101. I found that being good at writing spaghetti code (or even simple OO code) that works is not something that puts you ahead of other students in a computer science course, and that you actually have to learn the course material in order to pass. Who would have guessed!
If people like me don't have to take CS101 then we're slowly but surely going to end up with a community of programmers/engineers who don't have a firm enough grasp of basic concepts in computer science, and they'll be worse at their jobs for it.
A better solution is to have after-school workshops for high school kids where they can prepare for a degree in CS. They way it ought to work is that math teachers in poor neighborhoods should keep and eye out for kids who are talented at math and recommend them for the CS workshops.
Now, I imagine this sort of discrete sorting of students will probably get you sued in the US, but it would work in most other countries.