Well, what I was getting at was more in terms of their overall education - as in, once you've taught them basic programming, you should teach them software development, which NUIM doesn't seem to do much of. I'm not suggesting we teach that kind of stuff first - as you say, it wouldn't be too useful without the underpinnings. Programming by itself however, is of relatively limited use unless you're going to teach computer science or software development, or indeed something else, on top of it.