Re: Coding's an essential life skill
" And without understanding some elementary programming principles, you can't do much more in Excel than your daily expenses."
I can't even do that in Excel. Life doesn't seem to have ground to a halt as a result.
What seems to be being missed in general here is the value of the division and specialisation of labour.
It's simply not necessary for everyone to know how to code (or program for those making the distinction) any more than it is for everyone to know how to mine for scandium or to write Telegraph OpEds.
We only need enough people to have these skills to supply the desires of everyone for those outputs.
I can see the value of people being exposed to all of these opportunities as children but on the strict understanding that those who burst into tears at the very thought of programming (or scandium or the Telegraph) don't have to do it anymore.
" You can't understand how web pages work without at least a basic comprehension of JavaScript. You can't set up anything more than the most basic web site without PHP or Python."
I have entirely no clue at all about any of those things: although I do know that the readership of this site contains many who do and thus I can go off and think about Sc and bemoan having been fired by the Telegraph.
And as to Excel: no, really, how do you do anything at all in that?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
