My first programming class when I was in high school in 1998 had, as one of its in-class assignments to invent an algorithm for sorting an array of numbers and implement it in BASIC. I think most of the class, never having programmed before that semester, did just fine (though good nlogn solutions were not abundant).

That said, I agree that this is probably not the _very_ first book to read to learn algorithms and data structures, as some of the simpler earlier ones seem not to be included.