I went to Harvard for 2 years, and started out strongly considering CS as a major, but eventually went into the humanities. I definitely did get discouraged. I think for me the biggest part was that their intro class at the time was for both complete novices and people who'd done the computer science AP. Meaning it was SUPER fast and super stressful. And things just continued from there. The point of taking these classes was just to flail around and try not to drown, while having more coursework than my other 3 classes combined.
If they had had an "intro for beginners" and "accelerated intro", I would have probably stayed in the program. Also if their upper-level courses weren't like 60 hours of homework per week for one class. At a certain point I realized I just simply didn't have the stamina to do 60 hours for one class and all my other classes. So it was sort of like applying to be a doctor -- you know one of the prereqs is rotations where you don't sleep for 2 days straight, and if you can't do that, then for some reason, you can't be a doctor.
If they had had an "intro for beginners" and "accelerated intro", I would have probably stayed in the program. Also if their upper-level courses weren't like 60 hours of homework per week for one class. At a certain point I realized I just simply didn't have the stamina to do 60 hours for one class and all my other classes. So it was sort of like applying to be a doctor -- you know one of the prereqs is rotations where you don't sleep for 2 days straight, and if you can't do that, then for some reason, you can't be a doctor.