I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.
Harvey Mudd gets very bright students, so I could see this approach working there. Programming, like many other things, is a skill. Smart kids can pick up the basics quickly and solve moderately difficult abstract problems.
However, others become reasonably proficient through years of experience in learning what problems to avoid. So I wonder how well this approach would work in a lower level college.
