Andy Young writes the post I’ve been gearing up to, this is a great read, if you have children, of any age, take a few moments and read the whole thing: “Coding for Success”:

…The computer stands with the greatest developments in modern humanity (and has made many of the other great developments possible). Let’s not just brush over such a crass truism, though – what do we mean by this, exactly?

Computers are tools for automation – fundamentally of calculation (“computation”) but which can be applied to endless tasks, once we factor in the multitude of peripherals and interfaces now available. Computers help us automate and repeat the many complicated steps that make up the search for the answer to some of our hardest problems: whether that’s a biologist attempting to model a genome or an office administrator tasked with searching an endless archive of data.

The use of tools is a big part of what make us human, and the computer is humanity’s most powerful tool. When David beat Goliath or when today’s researcher makes a breakthrough, it’s the tools that help us win.

…Yet the majority of us are entirely dependent on a select few, to enable us to achieve what we want.

…The ability to code is what brings the power of computing to the masses. We need to break away from a culture where we consider people to be “technical” or “non-technical” – not everyone takes to literature or eloquent composition of prose, but we need to attack the phenomenon of the “non-technical” in the same way that we tackle illiteracy.