I took a MOOC offered by one of the elite schools that was based on their intro CS programming class. Although I&#x27;m not a programming professional, I&#x27;ve done a fair bit and have at least a degree of familiarity with the language the course used--as well as some basic concepts like sort algorithms, etc.<p>For me, the course wasn&#x27;t exactly hard but it certainly wasn&#x27;t trivial and, had I never written a program (or touched a command line), I&#x27;m sure I would have been completely and utterly lost. Sign up for any MOOC in this vein and there are obviously lots of people for whom it&#x27;s a totally bewildering experience.<p>By comparison, when I took my first computer class in college, it was a truly introductory FORTRAN course that really didn&#x27;t assume any prior knowledge. I did have a little BASIC in high school but that wasn&#x27;t very common at the time.