But musical literacy does require that you produce music on some instrument or with your voice, and it is rare that any level of musical training would advance very far without a basic understanding of how to use a piano to pick out some notes for reference. You could decide to learn music without ever learning the piano, but you would have to take great pains to avoid it.

Being able to use a computer but having no understanding of how to program it is like being able to operate a record player. Certainly, some people can do masterful work operating a record player -- to the point of an art. You may even learn to operate it in such a way that you could express your own musical ideas. But learning how to operate a record player does not make you musically literate.

I do not think that everyone needs to be a programmer, but I do think that computer education in our schools needs to at least introduce the basics of programming to every child. Even if they do not program for the rest of their life, it will give them a foundation for solving problems and improve their ability to use software others have written.

And digital literacy (for the want of a better term) doesn't necessarily require knowing how to code.