The paper presents a part of authors' research results, they obtained within a wider research focused on possibilities to influence students' attitudes and approaches to individual subjects, mainly the less favourite ones. Following the empirically derived hierarchy of subjects identifying the degree of individual subjects popularity among students, and influence of various factors on students' attitudes to these subjects the authors discuss students' interest in studying informatics and programming and try to identify the reasons of students' interest or disinterest in them. They try to answer the question what are currently the most powerful motivation factors for students to acquire new knowledge from these areas.