To explore the role of design thinking in contemporary computer literacy education, this study aimed to examine the relationship between young students' design thinking disposition and their computer programming self-efficacy. To assess students' design thinking disposition, this study developed the Design Thinking Disposition Scale (DTDS) with a sample of 350 junior high school students who had computer programming experience in a STEAM course. A principle axis factor analysis with the promax rotation method was used to verify the DTDS's construct under the four dimensions: "empathize," "define," "ideate" and "prototype." The Cronbach's alpha reliability was 0.90 for the overall scale. Correlation analyses results showed that all the four dimensions were significantly correlated with computer programming self-efficacy assessed by CPSES. A significant regression model was found in which the three factors, "ideate," "prototype" and "define," significantly predicted the overall computer programming self-efficacy. Meanwhile, except for the "ideate" subscale, no gender difference was found in the young students' design thinking dispositions. The students' self-directed programming learning experience was shown to benefit their design thinking disposition. The DTDS can be applied to design-thinking-embedded computer literacy curricula such as makers, STEAM, or robotics education. Several further studies are also suggested.