[Xuzz]

While this sounds nice, the truth is that most people do not need — or, in most cases, want — to code, or even to know how their computers work. As time goes on, the levels of abstraction increase, not decrease. And with things like the iPad and Windows 8, we can see that moving ahead for us right now. Computer science is not a "basic competency" — it's an extremely complex,

So I don't think it's weird at all for computer science to be thought of as less important, and certainly less popular. And I also don't think that's a bad thing; while I'd certainly think computers are cool, a computer science degree/programming knowledge is already unnecessary for almost all professions. As time goes on, the need to, say, customize AutoCAD, is only going to decrease: the computer itself will make the task easier.

[mjn]

Among the general public, possibly, but that's also true of mathematics. Among scientists, it looks like it's going the other way to me, approaching math and statistics as something that many people need to know at least a little of. Even over the past decade there's been a significant shift. In the early 2000s, most bioinformatics research was done by biologists in collaboration with computer scientists, with the biologists providing only the biology side of things. Today, it's increasingly common for biologists to be expected to understand and work with the tech side as well. At the very least, if you're a younger researcher working in a data-heavy area (and maybe even if you aren't that young), people expect you to be able to write some Python, interface with SciPy, and navigate matplotlib.

[Xuzz]

I'll agree with that. The scientific data sets are only going to get bigger.

[mcguire]

That's what they've been saying about spreadsheets[1] for my entire adult life.

[1] http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow.htm