The number of graduates in computer science (CS) is alarmingly low in western countries [1]. Many university recruitment programs have been developed, with limited success. Dropout remains a severe problem, which is hard to deal with [2]. Research on learners’ experiences and attitudes in relation to the discipline of computer science can provide important insights to address this problem [3].

We hypothesise that many students acquire negative attitudes towards learning CS as the result of unfortunate experiences. Would these students have become engaged if they had experienced CS differently? What are these unfortunate experiences? In contrast, what have other students experienced that encouraged them to engage?

With these questions in mind, the experiences and attitudes of relatively diverse students from the Sociotechnical Systems Engineering program at Uppsala University were explored, as they took an introductory CS course [4].

A questionnaire was designed to collect data on students’ prior attitudes, their experiences during the course and how these have supported or changed their prior attitudes. The results were very positive: All of the 36 respondents described overall positive experiences. Sixteen students, who stated that they had been skeptical towards CS before the course, seemed to have undergone a positive transformation in their attitudes. The descriptions of experiences were categorized by their focus on emotions, usefulness or understanding of the discipline and CS being a social activity.

Five students, who had described a positive transformation, focusing on different aspects, were interviewed. The aim was to get a better understanding of students’ experiences that have led to a positive attitude and of students’ reasoning about learning CS in the future.

The experience of CS being a fun, social activity that students are capable of, and through which problems are solved, appeared to be an important experience. Despite these positive experiences, the students delimit their future learning in CS. Their arguments relate to their understanding of the discipline and its meaning, and their ability to identify with CS. For instance one student describes CS as solving problems through programming. Learning more appears irrelevant since he is not one of the “real guys”, that write the code. He reasons about specializing in energy systems or CS: “I would pick energy because it's interesting and I see the relevance and I would pick the other mainly because I think it's fun.“ How would he reason if he experienced the relevance of CS for energy solutions?