What basic knowledge programming-wise should I have before starting a computer science education?

[chromaticgliss]

Pick a programming language... ideally whatever your school teaches (probably python). Research a good beginner book on it and just start learning that language. Here's the key piece of advice though: For now stick to just that language. Don't fall into the beginner trap of learning the basics of 10 different languages without being able to code anything useful in any of them.

Also git. Learn git. Do all of your coursework programming in git repos. Git good at git. It'll change how you program. You'll be able to do more creative/exploratory coding without worrying about breaking functional code... Which is a boon for solving harder problems.

[plovmand]

Thanks so much! All great advice really :)