On: We should teach all our kids to code

[moocow01]

"Computing is a basic skill on the same level as math and literacy"

Its actually not as basic of a skill as math and literacy. Proof of this is that it takes math and literacy as foundational skills to then program. I agree that programming is a good skill but please don't pitch coding as being at the same level as basic literacy. The difference between someone who is illiterate and someone who is illiterate at programming is vastly different.

[drcube → moocow01]

It's getting less different over time.

Let's go back a few thousand years and ask Plato. Suppose he says "Literacy is not as basic of a skill as speaking and remembering. Proof is that it takes speaking and memory as foundational skills to read and write."

He's probably right for 500 BC. You could get by just fine without reading or writing. Literacy was for specialized purposes such as government record keeping. But society grew more sophisticated, to the point where, in the last century or two, it's hard to get a job or function on a basic level in society without being literate.

Well the world turns quicker and quicker. It used to be that one could get by on brute force mental work. But a mere 70 years after the first gigantic electronic computing machines, computational automation is becoming a necessary part of our lives. It may be possible to avoid it now, but it's getting less possible every day.

Abstract computation is a new way of processing and understanding information. It is the next stage in the evolution of information processing, beginning with spoken and then written language. It isn't on the same level as speaking and reading yet, but it's getting there, and we won't do our children any favors by letting them think it's optional.