I read the article. I have seen similar arguments made by Nicholas Carr in "Peak Code" (http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5594) Perhaps learning to code and universal code literacy (for now, lets not argue exactly what literacy means) may, or may not save individual jobs. I sense as software development as a discipline matures, at the level of the firm, software developer wages as percent of a software project's budget, may shrink. At a macro level, software development as percent of GNP may rise but the software developer employment may look like the numbers involved in manufacturing, or farming. The point I feel Ruskoff misses is that coding literacy may not save an individual's job. Or having a sizable chunk of the U.S economy (or any sophisticated modern economy's) GDP coming from software development. However a critical mass of the population programming, like universal literacy, will most likely translate into vast productivity gains and ability to create new opportunities. An example. The idea behind "software carpentry"http://software-carpentry.org) is about teaching scientists just enough programming, so they can write tools be productive at their main activities, instead of doing things by hand, or hiring programmers. As a whole, research immensely benefits. It is easy to extend these ideas to the populate in general (and yes, I, like chef Gusteau, believe anyone can program). When I come to think about it, maybe this is what the BBC Microbit is about. I feel fields like home automation would explode once a critical mass of the population are code literate. To get back to Ruskoff's analogy, book publishing would be a much smaller industry if universal literacy did not create the supply of writers and demand in the form of readers.