If we define programming as the stuff that we on HN do for a living with C, Java, JavaScript, and the like, then teaching every American how to code is a futile

If we define programming as the stuff that we on HN do for a living with C, Java, JavaScript, and the like, then teaching every American how to code is a futile goal. Something on the order of half of all CS majors fail the introductory CS course. There is a really eyeopening paper by Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat[1] that has a test that can be given BEFORE the course that demonstrates fairly well who will pass and who will fail. There are 5 fundamental concepts that it tests for - assignment - statement sequence - iteration - recursion - concurrency although that is not needed for basic literacy Read it. It's an eye opener. [1] http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf [Jeff Atwood's link in Coding Horror 7/14/06 is broken] Edited: formatting