I had the opposite experience. I saw college kids who didn’t know where the F5 key was on the first day write smart matlab and python programs by the midterms.

I don’t think I’m exceptional at all. I was always behind and that probably reflected pretty poorly on me. But all it took to teach was preparing interesting examples and then spending time with subgroups and individuals.

I bet a lot of people think I’m catastrophically wrong, probably just got lucky.