I have started a new question (see here), because I think the topic is of importance in a more general form.

The question is now: If you were a professor at a Computer Science Dept. in some university, what would make it into your course? This is a programming course, second term, first year computer science/computer engineering. Remember you have a limited amount of time, and students are of different levels of competence, and some may be scientists, but some will also go on to be programmers in companies of different kinds. You have to cater to all.

Bonus: What language? (Although see this question for my current thoughts about this...)

Maybe you want to attach a course outline from some university?

See here for an even more general question about this.

Answer: I can't really summarize this post... I guess it was too subjective. However, it looks like we have to cover the history of computing up to a certain extent, computer architecture (memory, registers, whatever), C, and finally some basic algos and data structures in a problem solving fashion. This will be the bare bones of the course. Thanks all. I will accept the most voted up answer to close the thread, as it should be done.