I agree with you, having been on both sides of the divide and researched & written my masters thesis on teaching programming to undergrad science students.
Are you aware of https://software-carpentry.org/? It started after I graduated and I knew people who were involved with it at the time. It seemed like a good idea.
It looks like I didn't put it on Arxiv, so I need to find a copy and then put it back online :) Will reply here when I do, but likely to be a week+ before I do
