I'm sick of hearing that we need to teach kids to code. No, we don't. This idea comes from other coders who seem to be living in a bubble. It's important that w

I'm sick of hearing that we need to teach kids to code. No, we don't. This idea comes from other coders who seem to be living in a bubble. It's important that we teach kids to be computer literate but coding is not an essential skill. Do we need to teach all children to be doctors? I mean, we all have a body that needs to be taken care of, right? Do we need to teach all children how to assemble an automobile engine? No, driving the car and being able to check the oil or change a flat will suffice. Programming just isn't for everyone and no matter how often or loudly you scream that it is that doesn't make it so. Coding is hard and people think its boring. They won't persue it any further than they would a sport their parent puts them in that they dont like. There are things that all children should learn like reading, writing, and math but you wouldn't say all kids need to be trained in writing like a writer would or that mandatory math needs to incorporate the kind of stuff the guy from A Beautiful Mind was doing, right? In the same way that we all need to know how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, that's how we need to teach kids to code. Sketch the broad strokes of how a computer works. Give definitions of hardware and software and teach them how they interact with each other. Introduce them to the concept of binary data and how all code is just one's and zeros. After that it should just be up to the child to decide if they are fascinated enough to learn to code. Even if there is a shortage of software engineers it doesn't matter. Teaching kids to code young won't help them pursue it any further if they aren't interested. No one taught programming in schools years ago but I love it. I became fascinated with the idea that I could make the computer do anything I wanted and there are a lot more like me that did just fine without being taught it in schools. That's how any profession is, really. Pilots don't become pilots because they took an aeronautical engineering class, they do it because when they're little kids they see a plane in the sky and say "wow, I want to fly when I grow up". Same with programming. Somewhere, a kid who never has or will take a mandatory programming course before college is sitting at the computer, browsing Facebook and thinking "wow, I want to make my own websites/games/other software when I grow up".