[tlrobinson]

A lot of people seem to be offended by this, or think it's a waste of time. I think you need to realize there's a difference between learning to code and being a professional programmer.

I see "programming" as a skill like "writing" or "basic math" that everyone should know something about. We all know how to write and do some math but we don't call ourselves "writers" or "mathematicians".

But you'd never claim it's worthless to learn how to write or do arithmetic. Why not programming?

[pjin]

A lot of people do claim it's worthless to learn math or, at an extreme, writing correctly. That's part of the problem.