For its most ardent champions, enthusiasm for coding comes close to evangelism. From Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt—“Let’s get the whole world coding!”—and the actor Ashton Kutcher, to the NBA player Chris Bosh and the rap royalty Snoop Dogg—“support tha american dream n make coding available to EVERYONE!!”—teaching kids to code has gained high-profile support and widespread acclaim.
Perhaps for good reason. Jobs in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying careers for college graduates, and with the pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives, learning to code is increasingly seen as foundational and essential for learning—not unlike reading, writing, and arithmetic. President Obama in a January weekly radio address latched onto the comparison: “In the new economy … it’s a basic skill, right along with the three ‘Rs.’” And the White House has put a lot of stock in that idea, reserving $4 billion in its 2017 federal budget proposal for states to bolster computer-science education, and $100 million of those funds targeted for school districts to establish and expand computer science in classrooms across the country.