Coding Is Not a Life Skill

What does "life skill" mean? Is math a "life skill"? Why do we think that, other than the fact that math is force-fed to us and made part of our standardized testing? I've worked with many functional, professional adults who have taken enough math to get into elite colleges and yet, a few years removed from gradua5ion, can't confidently calculate tips without a phone app, nevermind use algebra to estimate proportions or reason (not actually calculate) about mathematical optimization. What other "life skill" can people practice for hours a day, five days a week, for 10+ years, but lose the ability to use it for everyday simple problems after just a few years?

I won't argue the case for coding as a "life skill" -- the fact that the OP equates it with carpentry, which IMO is like equating literacy with publishing a novel, means that we have different concepts of what "coding" entails. It's enough to point out that math wasn't always seen as essential to being a citizen in a developed country, and now that it is ubiquitous, it's still of dubious value for non-STEM adults if you have adopted as limited a view of math as the OP does of coding.

FWIW, the learn to code movement has existed long before it was "both trendy and lucrative"...it is not trendiness that makes it a valuable skill, it's the fact that computers and data are so much more ubiquitous today...just like literacy existed long before the printing press but was of dubious value before books and papers became commonplace https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1972/5079/00...

To me, the value in learning just a little bit of coding is in recognizing when something should be done programmatically and when something should be done by hand. Even a little bit of coding knowledge can allow that to occur, or allow the person to get the right person to automate it for them. The number of person hours I've seen wasted by not recognizing this is astonishing.

I haven't read the book, but I've read the title:

"Program or Be Programmed" by Douglas Rushkoff