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There's a big difference between literacy and knowing how to code. Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. That's huge. That gives you

There's a big difference between literacy and knowing how to code. Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. That's huge. That gives you access to everything if you're willing to put in the effort. That's freedom. "Code literacy" means knowing how to tell a computer to do something reliably and the associated lessons that come with that. That's good, but it's not the same. One is the ability to gain new skills at will, the other is just another skill to master. I say all this as a coder who thinks its important, I just think the hyperbole around "programming being the new literacy" to be overblown

pohl 14y ago
Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. Funny you should use the word 'overblown' after saying something like this. Literacy, at best, gives access to the world's words, not the world's knowledge, and actually only the fraction of the words that are in the language in which one is literate. I'm not just speaking of natural languages, either. A considerable amount of the world's knowledge is expressed in the languages of mathematics and music, for which literacy in English is weak preparation. Another enormous chunk of the world's knowledge is experiential, for which any language is a weak substitute for apprenticeship (at best) or mere doing (at least). The world's knowledge lies behind and endless chain of conceptual hurdles, and the ease with which one can jump over these hurdles while running on the legs of literacy is determined by everything else that one studies.