Programming knowledge is more important than ever in the digital world. However, teaching programming can be challenging, especially with novice learners. Considerable research has been conducted into the most effective methods for teaching programming. Extreme apprenticeship, a variation of cognitive apprenticeship, is a method that has been used in teaching programming at university level in recent years. Because this method focuses particularly on completing lots of exercises with coaching and guidance, it may solve many problems related to learning programming. Flipped learning can be useful for student preparedness and providing sufficient theoretical knowledge at the beginning of the course. This study compares the applications of the extreme apprenticeship method, flipped extreme apprenticeship, and traditional classroom, analyzing them at the university level in terms of their effects on academic achievement and engagement coupled with gender differences. The findings of the study indicate that the extreme apprenticeship and flipped extreme apprenticeship instructional methods improve academic achievement and student engagement in introductory programming more than the traditional method. The results of the research point to important directions for the development of the extreme apprenticeship method in programming instruction and provide a guide for instructors.