[axbytg]

The author seems to miss the boat super hard on

> 6. "Everyone Should Learn to Code"

Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in more people ending up in a toxic tech industry. This may be true. But the tech industry will never, ever change until we expose more kids to engineering as a choice. If we can cause a greater number and diversity of children and young adults to consider engineering as a career, the industry will be more diverse. this seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

Also the reaction to the Hour of Code makes me question whether or not the author has every lead or observed one in a meaningful way. Having led literally hundreds, almost every single one that I was involved with resulted in at least one student saying "I didn't think that this was for me / for people like me, but I really liked it". That makes it worth it. Hearing that one single time, makes every single HoC ever worth it in my opinion. I know a lot of teachers that would agree. Nobody on earth thinks kids are making significant progress towards mastery of programming from an hour of code -- it's about exposing every child and letting them know that they are capable of a career that is often, for a variety of reasons, seen as "not for them".

[jkhaui]

Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over.

It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast

[geomark]

I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.