You need to learn the difference between insults and logical fallacies. This has nothing to do with whether or not insults are bad in a discussion (they almost always are), it has to do with the poster citing the ad hominem fallacy incorrectly because they think using Latin words will strengthen their point.

Ad hominem (argumentum ad hominem) is a specific term of art to describe arguments that try to counter a thesis by attacking the character, qualifications, standing etc of the person claiming the thesis.

It does not mean an argument in which a person insults the person claiming the thesis. Insults rarely add anything to an argument but that is a different matter.

Also note that an ad hominem doesn't need to be insulting - it could be a very polite statement such as "This argument is incorrect because Mr Atwood is unqualified to discuss matters of education as he is not himself an educator". This is not really insulting (though I would argue that Jeff is in a way an educator) but is still an ad hominem.

Many programs are tiny, written in poorly-regarded languages (Excel, app macros, shell, etc.), and written by people without the title of "software engineer." Many times the number of well-known products like Word or Stack Overflow. But that doesn't mean they are not programs and it doesn't mean they are not serving useful purposes. And the number of areas where little programs could help in the future is huge.

Programming is not a specialized job and it does not require specialized knowledge. Even idiots can program. The fact that you can program shows that you had interest and access to computers but it does not put you in a special club. Programmers ARE everyday people, not a priestly caste who can be distinguished from birth. And in the last few decades their numbers have dramatically increased - with each generation's clueless and accidental beginners becoming the next generation's experts.

We don't tell people "please don't learn any math" or "please don't learn any geography" even though most people will not become specialists or need a specialist's understanding. These are still generally useful things and things which make you an educated and modern person. We don't know where they will be useful or to whom. It benefits many more individuals to know something about these, and it greatly benefits our society that many individuals know something about them.

"just listen to what the experts have to say" is something that started to change as of the Gutenberg Bible, thank God.

Very well said. My understanding of computers came far before my understanding of code.

I think people are falsely equating all the marks of a good programmer as being the benefits to learning how to program.

"It makes you logical, methodical, organized", etc etc.

Yes, these are all qualities you'll find in a good coder. However I don't think programming is a good way to teach these thoughts! NOT AT ALL!

I learned all those things by writing English papers. I had lots of problems writing in my early years, so I studied, and worked hard. I learned how to outline my thoughts. I learned how to properly revise a work. I learned how to organize my thoughts into logical units. I learned how to make those logical units flow into one another. I learned how to arrange those units so that they each make sense in context. I learned how to target a unit to a specific audience.

I think programming would've been a terrible way to learn those skills. English is at least somewhat forgiving. Even if your sentences aren't perfect, the general idea still comes across.

Learning to program involves weird and obscure syntax, you're constantly fighting with the compiler, you're dealing with stack-traces a mile deep every time you make a mistake.

Programming is an incredibly challenging way to learn problem solving.

Obviously I found that challenge to be worthy of pursuit. Certainly we shouldn't be discouraging anyone from learning how to code. At the same time though, I think it's incredibly offensive to say that everyone should know|learn how to code.

I don't think even Rushkoff would disagree that not all people have the drive to learn programming. And I would agree that programming is not the only way that one can learn the knowledge that one should have in the modern world so that one can be adequately informed on security/privacy issues and so on. But it certainly helps. Coding is becomming a less specialised job by the decade regardless of what any of us think about it. If one espouses the idea that 'programming is as important as reading' even if it may not yet be literally or globally true, then we are aiming for the stars and in the process, at least perhaps hitting a mountain.

No doubt your father is an acomplished man, but he would be a better Windows power user or sys admin if he was comfortable with PowerShell. One of my pet peeves are server admins who don't thnk they need to know any programming and thus don't truly understand the requirements of the developers who interact with their servers.

I feel that we're discussing things (if you'll excuse the cliché) too far inside the box. If one has a very blinkered view of the advantages that programming can provide then yeah, it's just a highly specialised tool, useful only to a few. But that's not what programming is to me. To me, its about communication, expression of ideas and discovery.

You say that learning JavaScript won't help you to understand your computer better. I disagree. By learning JavaScript, you will involuntarily learn more about one or more web browsers and perhaps from there, you may become more informed on how information is transmitted across the web and perhaps from there, you may learn to better protect yourself through more consistent use of encrypted data transfer, just as an example. You are right when you say learning to program does not magically impart knowledge of file systems or networking but when I learned Ruby, I would have had to try pretty damn hard not to learn by osmosis at least something I didn't know before about these topics while I was learning the language.

So yes, in the narrowest sense, programming is not currently as important as reading. But what does the public potentially gain if we suggest that it is? And I predict that the distance between ideal and reality will close as the decades pass.