Strategies to increase success in learning programming

Programming is a special activity, which requires very special skills. Creativity, problem solving, persistence, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, commitment, dedication and hard work are some of the skills and characteristics required of those who learn programming. They are also essential characteristics to face all the challenges of the 21st century. Learning programming is a good way to practice and develop these skills. That is why most courses, in the most diverse areas of knowledge, include programming in their curricula. However, programming courses have a bad reputation. These courses have high failure and dropout rates. It is recognized by the whole scientific community in the area that there are problems and difficulties in teaching and learning programming. With this work we want to present our set of strategies and results in the improvement of our system of teaching and learning initial programming, and with that also contribute to the development and resolution of the problem. In this work, we describe a set of activities related to the initial learning of programming with good results. We present the results of the application of a machine-learning model for predicting student failure, with excellent accuracy and precision results. Finally, we argue the improvements in our teaching system and initial learning of programming, with the final results of the course of the last 5 years.