Threshold concepts can be used to both organize disciplinary knowledge and explain why students have difficulties at certain points in the curriculum. Threshold concepts transform a student's view of the discipline; before being learned, they can block a student's progress.

In this paper, we propose that in computing, skills, in addition to concepts, can sometimes be thresholds. Some students report finding skills more difficult than concepts. We discuss some computing skills that may be thresholds and compare threshold skills and threshold concepts.