People often confuse the mechanical learning of reading and writing, with the more advanced learning of how to write properly and how to analyze texts. Learning

People often confuse the mechanical learning of reading and writing, with the more advanced learning of how to write properly and how to analyze texts. Learning to write properly, learning to lay out one's argument, or story, in a solid, comprehensible and fun to read way is difficult. The learning process actually changes the student thought process, making it more structured and forcing a third-person view of the text. The same actually applies to programming. The mechanical task of programming isn't very difficult, and can be taught in a few dozen hours. The thought process that leads to solid programs, though, is akin to proper writing. It is hard, requires an even more structured approach to defining solutions, and actually changes one's approach to modelling reality in general. If we believe that a formal view of the world is a necessary skill (which I do), then teaching programming is as useful as teaching good writing. Note that I don't mean the basic skill of writing code, but the skill that is similar to good writing. Distinguishing the two is necessary for discussion. We can call it programming and software engineering, or programming and Programming (with a capital P), or something else. The rote task and the modelling task lead to different discussion paths.