> The point is, even among STEM subject, there's a taboo around computer science and programming. I really thought this was no longer true, but it rings true t

> The point is, even among STEM subject, there's a taboo around computer science and programming. I really thought this was no longer true, but it rings true to me as someone who was in school in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, being into computers was a social liability. It was way worse than being into math and science. Math and science weren't optional, and they were important for college admissions, so being good at them didn't prove you were a weirdo who actually liked that stuff. You were just taking advantage of your intelligence to succeed at something that everybody else wished they were better at, too. (Assuming, of course, you didn't cop to thinking calculus was SUPER COOL.) Being good with computers, on the other hand, demonstrated a kind of stupidity that outweighed the intelligence it required. To understand how it could be socially negative to do something that everybody assumed required a lot of intelligence, you could, from a narrow point of view, compare being good with computers to going to jail for beating up a police officer. Being strong and tough was a desirable attribute, just like intelligence was, but that particular way of proving it was way worse than not being strong at all. It showed a different kind of weakness that cemented your identity as a loser, somebody that a "good" person was better off not knowing. Even if it made you seem mysterious and fearful, at the same time, it made you "less than" and socially irrelevant. I thought this was changing in the 21st century. When I look at people under 35 in the industry, I don't see signs of having grown up under that social stigma. I might be missing it because of other generational differences, though. I'm curious what others think. > Perhaps better than saying "programming is hard," or "programming is easy," we say "programming is worth it" and leave it there. Maybe "programming is necessary" or "programming is ubiquitous?" Maybe the best way to remove the stigma is to convince kids that people who struggle with programming will wish they were better at it, rather than being able to dodge it entirely. Let's turn it into something that everybody wishes they were a little bit better at, so they don't automatically look down on people who succeed with it.