Software is a vital resource for modern life. For software to be successful, programming skills are of the utmost importance. These skills are used both by programmers and also by systems analysts and designers during the phases of software development. Therefore, both technical and non-technical stakeholders within the software development process need to understand programming. Evidence from the researchers’ experience indicates that non-technical stakeholders perform poorly in programming courses. Given the lack of literature on the attitude factors influencing programming success by non-technical students, this study set out to determine the attitudinal factors influencing successful programming by non-technical (Commerce) and technical (Computer Science) students at a South African University. Using a descriptive survey design, a 50-question Likert scale survey was completed by 126 Commerce and Computer Science students in the Information Technology discipline. Both Commerce and Computer Science students demonstrated a positive attitude towards realising the usefulness of computer programming, however Computer Science students demonstrated a higher overall positive attitude. Furthermore, for Commerce students, performance was correlated with these factors: confidence in learning programming, usefulness of programming and effectance motivation in programming. Hence it is recommended that strategies be devised by lecturers and programming course designers to increase student confidence and effectance motivation in programming, which will result in better student performance. Introducing a problem-solving approach and pair-programming, developing targeted courses and an early use of visual programming environments have been suggested to improve the overall confidence of non-technical students.

软件是现代生活的重要资源。为了使软件成功，编程技能至关重要。在软件开发阶段，程序员以及系统分析人员和设计人员都将使用这些技能。因此，软件开发过程中的技术和非技术利益相关者都需要了解编程。研究人员的经验表明，非技术利益相关者在编程课程中的表现很差。由于缺乏影响非技术学生编程成功的态度因素的文献，本研究着手确定影响南非大学非技术（商务）和技术（计算机科学）学生成功编程的态度因素。使用描述性调查设计 信息技术专业的126名商业和计算机科学专业的学生完成了一个50个问题的李克特量表调查。商科和计算机科学专业的学生都表现出对实现计算机程序设计的积极态度，但是计算机科学专业的学生则表现出更高的总体积极态度。此外，对于商科学生来说，成绩与以下因素相关：对学习编程的信心，编程的实用性和编程的动机。因此，建议由讲师和编程课程设计者设计策略，以提高学生对编程的信心和影响力，从而提高学生的表现。介绍问题解决方法和结对编程，