That's fair, but I think there's more than one causal factor. Of course, the rise in programming in culture plays a role, but I think David Malan might be more important—I shopped CS50 the year before he started and took it a year later from him, and he's extraordinary. He has reportedly made it his mission to make it the biggest and most popular class at Harvard, and is nearly there. It's been an incredibly well-oiled operation from the beginning, but now the level of support, the project fair, his lectures, etc., are finely honed.

If someone could do/had done the same thing to CS51, I might have fonder memories of my first Lisp and object-oriented experiences...