"I think the former has value to people with no aspirations in CS (a lot of value, really, everyone needs basic IT skills in the modern world)." Well yes, but

"I think the former has value to people with no aspirations in CS (a lot of value, really, everyone needs basic IT skills in the modern world)." Well yes, but let me tell you a little story. One of the things that I get to notice, as a woman, which my male colleagues don't, is just how repetitive womens' work often is in the office. I have a lot of female friends that are secretaries, receptionists, assistants etc, which I don't think is true of most men working in IT. And I see how much of the daily grind of what those women do could be automated, if only they knew how to put together macros, or even just how to make use of tools like Automator on the Mac. I have tried teaching macro programming to a couple of them, but they get stuck on the simplest of programming concepts. What's a variable? How can I expresss a complex algorithm given a small set of primitives? Flow control, what's that?!?! I can't help thinking that if they had learned these very simple basic concepts when they were back learning about how to set tabs in Word, that they would be many times more effective in their office jobs today. So even if someone has no interest in CS as a career, the reality is that these days many, if not a majority, of jobs could be helped by it - running a small business, office work, etc. But if you leave it until the person is an adult out in the workforce, they often won't want to learn.