[Ben1220]

all good advice here. They don't assume any programming knowledge at Melbourne University, and I assume the same is true everywhere else, so you won't need to learn it before hand. But I picked up python the month or two before uni started, which gave me a head start. Of course I did things "the wrong way" at first, but I guess I hadn't done enough programming for this to be something that needed to be "unlearnt" It won't hurt to figure out how if statements, while and for loops, functions and basic data types work. Just learn the basics if you want, that will probably be the first few weeks of Uni anyway. In Theory, Computer Science is much more then just programming, programming is sort of a prerequisite knowledge that is required for some areas of computer science, but in practice, all universities would need to spend quite some time getting undergraduates programming skills up to the level required to study computer science. If you do software engineering you will probably learn about software design and how to program "the right way" and all that stuff in later years. We use python in first year at Melbourne Uni, probably because its so easy to use. Its not a bad idea to start with python, there are plenty of online tutorials and stuff that can teach you the basics.