Computer science plays a significant role in almost every aspect of life today. From communication and business to entertainment and education, technology and computers are an essential part of daily life. Additionally, computer science has an increasing role in education, providing people with easy access to knowledge and enabling us to learn in different ways. Learning programming has become extremely important today, not only for those who want to work in the IT industry but also for people in other professions. The reason for this is that programming is used in many different fields, from business and finance to science and engineering. The aim of the research described in this paper is to discover the factors that affect the success of fifth-grade students in programming, considering that some students attended elective computer science classes from first to fourth grade, while others did not. The participants in the study were fifth-grade students, whether or not they had taken elective computer science classes. The research results show that a small number of students had encountered computer science outside of school, and the majority of students who had taken elective computer science classes had better knowledge of programming, and thus better grades, than students who did not attend elective computer science classes.