Oh how times have changed.
In secondary school ("high school"), The only computer subject they taught was IT, and people weren't allowed to take it unless they had a special reason not to take a foreign language. It was rumored to be ridiculously easy.
The UK is supposed to be bringing in a programming GCSE - I'll believe it when I see it.
The end result is that university CS programs are run with the assumption that highschool students had zero prior experience with programming.
There's a reason that so many software geeks are hardcore libertarians and Bill Gates was fighting to reform teaching into a meritocracy - the educational system basically ignored their core skill-set and so the students were often self-taught. Obviously schools are playing catch-up now, but you can't change the past experiences of two generations of programmers.