The answer to your question is a very easy YES! Think about it: isn't your question isomorphic to "do all students need high school algebra", "if you're not bec

The answer to your question is a very easy YES! Think about it: isn't your question isomorphic to "do all students need high school algebra", "if you're not become a historian do you still needs to know all those details from the history class" and countless others. Some of these questions do have merit (how many among the HN crowd remembers or cares about how photosynthesis works or sin^2 + cos^2 = 1) bu they miss the point: those topics are there to open your brain to ideas, mental weigh lifting if you will. In this sense you most definitely need to teach recursion and coding concepts. Coding (especially for high schoolers) doesn't have to be "sitting in front of a computer alone all day", in fact if this is how it's presented that's totally the wrong approach. That comes in the pro stage. At he early stage you have to stress the creative and social aspects of coding.