[onion2k]

Knowing how to write code in any specific language is ultimately a fairly useless skill except in a handful of jobs. Unless you're someone who is either a developer or a spreadsheet user the chances are pretty high you'll sail through life without even seeing a line of code.

However... the parts of programming that are useful to everyone are applied logic, critical thinking, and 'debugging'. Being able to break down a problem, find a metaphor for a problem, evaluate what you know and don't know about a problem, etc are useful skills that apply everywhere, and that programming teaches really well. When something isn't working, being able to ascertain why by changing things one at a time, or by knowing that you can iterate to a solution instead of jumping to the last step, are immensely powerful ways of thinking about things.

There may be other ways to teach those skills instead of abstracting them to programming but I've not encountered any good ones yet.

[baq]

debugging mechanical engineering is quite similar, just more expensive ;)

[onion2k]

I think there's a key difference that puts programming a bit further ahead in my opinion - you can make a backup with software. You can 'undo' what you've tried, or reset the whole thing. In general with physical things you can only move forwards, and potentially you can make things way more broken than they already are. That's a useful lesson in itself, but if people are learning it's good that they're not scared of making mistakes. It's a lot harder to make things catastrophically broken with code (despite my best efforts).