> The President almost certainly inspired a few thousand kids to take a look at programming. Which, of course, is the problem. I'm not an American, but when I

> The President almost certainly inspired a few thousand kids to take a look at programming. Which, of course, is the problem. I'm not an American, but when I was younger, there was a big push by my government to inspire kids to look at teaching. And they did. In droves. Out of interest, a quick tally of the high school friends I kept in touch with shows that 60% of them attempted to pursue teaching as a career in some capacity. Naturally, when you saturate a market, you get all the problems of market saturation. Most of them struggled to find work, often landing only temporary positions, and several gave up on their dream completely after not being able to find any work in the field. Those who did find jobs as teachers have watched their incomes decline. The fear many have is that coding is just being pushed because programming is currently, like teaching was several years ago in my area, experiencing more jobs than people. By promoting coding as "the future" we are sending the message to kids that if they just learn to program, they too can walk into a $100K per year job like programmers do today. Except it won't play out that way. It never does. Silently introducing coding as part of the existing math/computer curriculum seems like a pretty good idea. It is a useful device. However, having people like Obama, Gates, Zuckerberg, and other famous people to talk about how important coding abilities are makes it look like a play specifically to increase worker numbers, which will end badly for anyone following that path.