I'm surprised the article didn't say more about the phenomenon of businesses using gargantuan Excel spreadsheets held together with a Escher-like tangle of macros and formulas. As much as the idea makes "real" programmers shudder, it's one of the best examples of otherwise not-particularly-technical people doing some manner of programming to automate their day-to-day tasks.
I'm a little surprised by the positive tone of the comments here thus far. This article reads like a futurist article from 100 years ago—it's a compelling fantasy, but it's clear that technology is still largely in the realm of magic to the author.<p>You simply can not conflate technological literacy with programming. If you consider basic application configuration and usage to programming then the thesis makes sense, but that also guts it of any significance—of course new generations will naturally learn to use new technology better than their predecessors.<p>The reality is that programming itself is becoming more complex and varied as technology progresses. So while the average person will much more computer "savvy", programmers will become more and more specialized, and the needs of the masses will be met by an ever widening range of devices and applications. The majority of programming will be the realm of geeks at least until the advent of true AI, at which point I'm afraid our fun in the sun may be over.
I prefer the somewhat more general term <i>procedural literacy</i> to <i>programming literacy</i>. I don't think the main issue is knowledge of particular programming constructs, so much as a general ability to think in terms of, "how would I conceptualize this problem so that I could make a computer do it?" It's things like thinking in terms of <i>repetition</i>, or <i>values</i> or <i>control flow</i> or <i>composition</i>, or even just <i>sequences</i> that I think are the fundamental literacy elements. I think someone who could reliably give detailed instructions in English, with nothing left vague / up to "common sense", would have the basics of the kind of literacy at issue, even if they had never programmed a computer.<p>More: <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22procedural+literacy%22" rel="nofollow">http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22procedural+...</a>
While his definition of 'programming' is a bit broad (he lumps in 'configuring things via menus' with writing code) and his vision for the application of programming skills in the future shows a lack of understanding of what code is useful for, I thought his analogy to medieval scribes was excellent.<p>Also, this is totally false (and a cop out, people can learn if they want to): <i>"Most of the tools (and even the concept of programming) were developed long after these teachers were born or schooled."</i><p>Of course, I agree with his overall thesis, that coding will become as vital to expressing yourself as writing is today, and that is why I posted it.
The article is mostly good, though the author does not know a lot about programming and it shows.<p>The comments seem to suffer from light "facebook login" syndrome.
The key flaw in the article is buried in a parenthetical: the author provides no compelling argument to support his contention that programming will become easier. Programming anything sophisticated by plugging pre-built components into each other with little or no understanding of their innards has been a pipe dream for years.
You can very easily live a meaningful, functional (pun intended), and literate life without ever getting into doing system configurations or writing HTML.<p>If you want to get your word out and communicate, you can do that as long as you can type. Having someone to fix your computer for you so that you can blog isn't illiteracy, nor learning to sign up to Gmail isn't comparable to learning to read and write. Or something else like that: the author was rather vague as for the technical skills he deemed to be required for literate modern life. But HTML "coding" sure as hell isn't one of them!<p>Being a geek and being literate in "geek" language and thinking is a different thing from living a life. You might as well say that because cars are so ubiquitous and in countries with certain infrastructure they're almost mandatory, people need to know how they work and to fix them in order to be "literate", so that they can drive out and communicate with people instead of relying on more knowledgeable people to fix them for them.
"tomorrow's highly literate person may prefer to change, by programming, whatever story or other media he or she is interacting with to suit individual preferences, and might then, with a little more programming, distribute those changes to the world."<p>The author apparently does not know about Greasemonkey or blogs or RSS feeds :)
Digital literacy (how to use technology/computers) maybe, programming literacy I am more sceptical.
The use of computers and basic tools is more vital than programming for the average person. Most employers require it, soon it will be necessary to buy basic services (plane ticket, concert ticket).
""Me?" you say. "Why would I have such a need?" But this possibility is not far-fetched at all. For instance, when Howard Dean ran for U.S. president"<p>Ok, what if you are not running for U.S. president?<p>I also would like to teach programming to people, because I enjoy it. But lately I have thinking about the people working at the checkout in my local supermarket. While obviously software can improve supermarkets, I am not sure what software need they could program for themselves in their spare time?<p>Also, I have come to think that installing apps on an iPhone is actually also something like programming. By installing and using Google Maps, you have essentially reprogrammed an aspect your daily life.