My own take is that this suffers the same problem as all the other "Teach everyone to code" initiatives. Learning to be even a moderately good programmer requi

My own take is that this suffers the same problem as all the other "Teach everyone to code" initiatives. Learning to be even a moderately good programmer requires the willingness to keep screwing around with an annoyingly stupid, complex machine for however long it takes to adjust your thought processes to match the challenges of computer programming. It's not enough to think logically. You have to be able to think logically where applicable while at the same time understanding that some stuff makes no sense -- either it's so complex that it feels nondeterministic, or you're faced with the social complexity of a ridiculous software stack, or even though you're working on a "simple" high-level problem you have to cut through nearly all the layers of abstraction to get a clear understanding of what the real problem is. And many real problems end up being twice as hard as you'd ever have imagined. And I don't think our culture is doing a good job of raising people with the values to be willing to do that. If anything, childhood education teaches to spit out the "correct" answers and to follow the rules. This does not help develop the mental strength to be a good programmer.