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Abstract. Learning programming has been considered challenging by students and remains a daunting task for educators despite their efforts into finding innovative ways to teach programming. A lot of factors have been studied since 1970s and educators today are still trying to unearth the factors that play significant roles in learning programming. As most of the important research in this regard has been done in developed countries, it is imperative to understand whether differences in education culture between developed and developing country can influence how the factors affect learning of programming. This paper presents the results of a comparative study on the effects of differences in education culture between two universities in Australia and India respectively on the chosen factors in learning introductory programming. The results show that prior programming experience, gender, reason to study programming, attendance, and revision had different effects, while activities performed in the lecture theatre and preliminary preparation before lecture and lab had the same effect in the two universities. The findings help gain insight whether certain factors are culture dependent/independent so that educators can focus on the specific factors that will help students better learn programming in a particular education culture context.

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Vietnam which foughtand routed the mighty United States in the name of an uncompromising revolutionary Marxist ideology professing 'People's democracy' encompassing democratic centralism, nationalised economy and the predominance of the Communist Party, is fighting a lonely battle today to keep at least some of the old socialist remnants alive in the face of the onslaught of the west-sponsored agenda of global liberalisation. The post-Cold War period has left Hanoi anchorless with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its alliance system in which the former had figured prominently. A significant part of this process was a volte face Vietnam had to do towards the end of the eighties on its Cambodia policy. The reversal of the power game in the Indo-China region seriously impeded the Vietnamese prospects of 'exporting' socialist revolution to the rest of Southeast Asia.The situation was not eased with the simultaneous breakdown of the multilateral Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in 1991 from which Vietnam was receiving substantial economic assistance to build up a socialist economy. This left Vietnam holding its membership of the west-dominated capitalist multilateral bodies like the World Bank, IMF, Asian Development Bank to fill the double void by seeking and succeeding in ending the western economic embargo imposed on it for nearly a decade and a half, by 1993-94. As if realising the inevitability of the only course left open to it in order to be coopted in a predominantly capitalist world, Vietnam sought and obtained observer status at the GATT, full membership in the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and full membership of ASEAN by 1994-95.'