That's nothing new, really. I was taught programming (but not much, just a little BASIC, and I already knew it by the time) in a public elementary school in Cze

That's nothing new, really. I was taught programming (but not much, just a little BASIC, and I already knew it by the time) in a public elementary school in Czechoslovakia in late 1980s, during the communist regime period. But it should be pointed out that the real socialist society was much more do-it-yourself than western capitalist societies are. Mostly out of necessity, but partly because people had quite a bit of free time and couldn't freely associate (and argue about politics on social networks). So hypothetically, if the communist regime continued to this day, programming skills would probably become much more useful to an ordinary person.