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I had to read your post 3 times and I still don't understand the source of your disagreement. You wrote that exposure will "make them more effective people" and the the author's wording was "a necessary skill for jobs of the future." Are those two things materially different? or in conflict AT ALL?

You called the latter "patently ridiculous" but then made a very similar argument. I don't get it.

Splitting hairs?

Those are vastly different things. Computer programming is a necessary skill for a small number of technical positions in software development, data analysis, and research, a tiny percentage of the jobs in the economy. Even at a midsize SAAS company, 30% or more of the positions don't require programming. Teaching computer science to every single kid because a tiny percentage will need programming for their job would be ridiculous, just like it would be ridiculous to teach every kid history because writing research papers is a "necessary skill for the jobs of the future." You can, however, make a reasonable argument that kids should be exposed to powerful ways of thinking that shape their world, and that learning concrete skills (writing a program, writing a research paper, solving equations) is a good way to familiarize kids with new ways of thinking. The arguments are only similar in that they both claim that studying a topic in school will have some benefit later. That isn't a high degree of similarity in the context of asking what students should study in school.

I'm not sure I agree. Knowing programming specifically -- how computers work, and how to write scripts to control them and automate your workflow -- rarely does not have a positive impact on your productivity at work and your aptitude in understanding the world around you. Computational thinking is important as well, but you can't discount the practical angle here.

Oh, sure, I agree with you on that. I'm just contrasting the actual stated purposes of such programs with the author's strawman version of them.

A century ago, the same argument was made for teaching Latin in elementary school.

I teach my elementary school age children about the Latin and Greek roots of the words we use to give them a better understanding of things.

I won't know how effective my instruction is until they're much older but it's my belief that having a deeper understanding of the words we use has a positive effect on one's thinking.

My wife came home today and said her work load had just doubled. She's been told to copy reports from Word to a web based application. I told her that this could be scripted really easily. She shrugged. Imagine the efficiencies possible in normal jobs if everyone knew of the possibility of automation, even if they weren't able to do it themselves.

Well, if it's a one off task, it would probably be more efficient for the non coding human to just do it, rather than realise this is something someone else could automate this one time. Bearing in mind that we don't live in a perfect world and the data would more than likely need a "human touch" in terms of applying intelligent actions to malformed/missing data (even more so if the data isn't in a structured format)

In all reality, it would just be yet another thing that could be automated but it probably isn't financially worth it. The 'x' human effort in this one time task is probably not worth the '3x' human effort to get someone who can code familiar with the data and then be on hand to answer any non obvious questions.

Course, mileage may vary depending on exact data(size, quality etc)

Well said.

It's not important everyone becomes a proficient programmer - it's important kids are exposed to the ideasand given the knowledge and oportunity to pursue it further if they want.

Like with most other school subjects.

>It's not important everyone becomes a proficient programmer

programming is a tiny subsection of a far larger and more useful skill that should be thought more, analytical thinking. learning kids how to break down problems into smaller ones, how to think logically etc is far, far more useful then learning them programming.

Both are useful, and in world where code resides in dozens of devices in your daily life an exposure to it will be useful and help your picture of the world.

Well... if you read up to that point you would also have read "is the key to the future for both children and adults alike" - and you've only addressed the kids bit. I think the silly craze has died down a bit in the UK, but a few years ago we were subjected to such excitement as the news highlighting activities like c level execs doing coding classes in their lunchbreaks - 10 o'clock news?! This may have been about the same time as the BBC microbit was produced - I've heard nothing of that recently either. Easiest way to confirm it was a silly craze is to watch peak daft hysteria disappear into the distance.

The idea of making some degree of programming universal in the school curriculum both predates and will outlast the craze you're talking about. I don't know about the Trump plan, but Obama proposed spending hundreds of millions of dollars changing the way hundreds of millions of elementary to high school aged kids are taught. If such a program is carried out, the effects and the costs will be felt over decades.

c level execs doing coding classes in their lunchbreaks

This just doesn't sound weird to me at all. CTOs read about marketing and finance; pharma CFOs read about biochemistry. Execs spend an afternoon working in the call center or learning to operate a jackhammer to prove they're regular guys. It's what you get when you mix ambition, personal curiosity, image awareness, and having the authority to make stuff like that happen. In that context it's not as significant as the 10 o'clock news might make it sound.

I did learned about loosely related to my job topics or on the news topics over lunch breaks and evenings. I am programmer, but I did read up on management, accounting, physics, art, biology, finance, children, history etc. I dont think any of that was silly.

For many people, the idea that they could do learn some programming was new and they were curios just as I was about the above. Pretty much any temporary hobby people tend to do is like that - something wakes up curiosity and ambition. Network effect is usually smaller, it is just one company or office doing the thing, but when it is in the news a lot of them gonna do it at the same time.

Solving algebra problems IS a core requirement for living in this day and age. It's a key component of financial literacy and those inadequately familiarized with the material suffer greatly from it.