The rationale for this rapid curricular renovation is economic. Teaching kids how to code will help them land good jobs, the argument goes. In an era of flat and falling incomes, programming provides a new path to the middle class – a skill so widely demanded that anyone who acquires it can command a livable, even lucrative, wage.
This narrative pervades policymaking at every level, from school boards to the government. Yet it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won't make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages down – and that's precisely the point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:19PM
save your "save the working man's wage" bullshit for your communist meetings. The whole fucking point of learning to program should be that you can be free from the slave colony. what kind of stupid fuck says "i want to learn programming so i can find some big, slow, dumb, abusive company to work for that will have me write soul sucking code for shit wages", instead of writing their own software and cutting out the middle man? if you're a better programmer than me, and you aren't working for yourself, you're a dumb fuck and you deserve to get treated as such.