> Can everyone be code literate?
Why not, for the same reason that everyone can be - to reasonable standards - be literate?
This is merely a new and powerful form of literacy that has become relevant due to a particular set of technological circumstances, but structurally it's not that different from the printing press preceding widespread literacy of the regular sort.
And no doubt this form of literacy is powerful. It relates to an understanding of how to describe the processing of information in various contexts. In an increasingly information overloaded world, the ability to use the tool of your time to process the information you need will become a critical ability.
I think one fallacy we can implicitly succumb to is the notion that "everybody knowing how to program" somehow relates to everyone being a programmer.
Everyone knowing how to read and write doesn't mean everyone is an author or a technical writer. But everyone _does_ use their ability to read and write to make their own work more productive within their contexts. And even in a personal context, being able to read an ingredients list, or write a shopping list, is underpinned by literacy.
What's so hard to imagine about a future where everyone knows how to build small useful programs for themselves, and just as everyone has access to post it notes and notepads, everyone having access to a few small devices that allow them to use that literacy to build programs that are useful to them in their day to day activities?
It's hard to imagine the specifics of how that might be applied, but it seems easy to imagine the transformative power of that sort of a casual power being not just available to the masses, but understood and able to be exercised by all of them.