I think the difference here is that reading is considered to be so important that people don't just stop if a child doesn't learn it. The child will end up spen

I think the difference here is that reading is considered to be so important that people don't just stop if a child doesn't learn it. The child will end up spending an enormous amount of time studying something when another technique might allow them to learn it more quickly. There is no similar equivalent for learning how to program. No one is going to prevent a student from graduating college until they figure out how to read and write a computer program, and you sure as hell can't prevent them from going out to play.