Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

If they aren't themselves drawn to and captivated by the medium, then they simply shouldn't be here. They should be somewhere they actually care about instead. You could maybe set something up that would pique their interest (modding a video game, a robotics project, automating some bit of rote math homework they hate), and if it does, take that lead and support them in any way you can. Otherwise, it's just proselytizing with a different bible, and people seldom appreciate that. You will not reach ears that don't care.

The only valid reason is that you&#x27;d like to know how to program a computer.<p>Nobody ever expected me to be able to learn to do surgery, plant stuff, design buildings or whatever. Programming is not basic literacy. Let&#x27;s stop pretending it is.

Compelling depends highly on which teenager you’re talking to.<p>Some reasons that teenagers I know have chosen to program are:<p>- To make video games<p>- To make web sites<p>- Because programmers make money<p>Some reasons that programming is a decent career choice:<p>- It’s extremely transferable. The number and types of companies that need programmers is increasing every day. You can find good jobs almost anywhere, plus working remotely is now an option.<p>- Nearly all fields of science, math &amp; engineering now involve programming, even including many soft sciences. Research of all kinds has moved into computing environments for statistics. (As a small example, I help my brother who’s an anthropologist write software to do things like measure &amp; categorize rabbit bones.)<p>- There are many interesting problems to solve, and pretty much all businesses are interesting in automating expensive processes.<p>Compelling reasons for me:<p>- Making digital art. Using procedural techniques to make pictures is one of my favorite things ever.<p>- Working out algorithms and solving problems and optimizing code is like doing puzzles, it’s a ton of fun.<p>- I’ve helped make movies and video games, as well as web apps and other production software that millions of people have seen &amp; used. Programming can be a good way to get involved in projects that feel important or culturally relevant.

Because it&#x27;s a form of literacy. If they don&#x27;t want instinctively to learn is because educational institutions aren&#x27;t making it interesting or engaging.<p>It&#x27;s important because it allows us to instruct computers to do things on our behalf. The only infinitely versatile tool in human history.<p>Why should they only use their computer for browsing &amp; word processing?

How does one instill a value with a young person a concept that takes half a life to discover?<p>I overuse &#x27;flossing&#x27; as an analogy for anything that takes a long time to appreciate the value of. I&#x27;ve tried to promote flossing with various narratives - that its prideful, that it steals money from dentists, that it&#x27;s the last people do but the first they should.<p>I always figure that the floss analog is falling flat, that it&#x27;s not amusing or easy to understand or relevant as an analog, but I always come back to ulterior, that I just have no clue how to instill a value with a person that can only appreciate through decay.<p>Anyways I have no idea how to transfer these ideas to young people and since its the only way to &#x27;give back&#x27; that I know, I&#x27;m feeling really useless.

Programming is difficult, and forcing young people to do something difficult that they don&#x27;t find intrinsically interesting and compelling is mostly a waste of time and effort. Just because a parent wants their child to be able to play the piano with great skill doesn&#x27;t mean they&#x27;ll take to it.<p>However, learning to use computers for relatively simple tasks and as an aid in other areas makes a lot of sense. Take the concept of compound interest - an important notion for anyone who ever wants to buy a house. Learning how to write a simple script in a language like Python to calculate compound interest is going to be a useful life skill. Similarly, learning to write a simple script that backups all your stored photos to some storage media or other is a useful skill to have.<p>Notice this is very different from the old &#x27;computer literacy&#x27; class concept that was all about teaching students that they needed to use Microsoft Office for everything, and that ideally they&#x27;d run Office on an Apple computer for all their needs. That was just a corporate marketing game.

For me, it was always simple. Learning to program gives you control over your environment, and in some sense the world. This is more true now then it was when I was a teenager.<p>For most teens the thing they grate against the most is lack of control over themselves and their direction. Programming puts you back in control. You can make a general purpose computer do anything you can imagine.

<i>&quot;You don&#x27;t really understand something until you can explain it to a computer!&quot;</i> &#x2F; <i>&quot;If you can &quot;explain&quot; something to a computer then you&#x27;ve understood it, you don&#x27;t need anyone else&#x27;s confirmation of your understanding.&quot;</i><p>This were the <i>breakthrough</i> sparks of enlightenment for me, even if at first I only groked them viscerally... only decades later I found the words for this.<p>Programming is a tool for thought, a tool for thinking in a very peculiar, rare and <i>valuable</i> way. <i>It doesn&#x27;t matter if you&#x27;ll rarely&#x2F;ever use it to actually write usable software.</i> In other kinds of thoughts, we can always glance over stuff and be misleading or imprecise without even realizing it. When you put something into code and something really dumb, eg. a computer, executes them, <i>you have a rare chance to actually se how incredibly bad your thinking and your instructions and your communication in general are!</i><p>(And that it&#x27;s good at making you feel stupid... this <i>alone is good reason to make everyone learn it, most people think themselves way too smart and don&#x27;t understand how complex everything is around them!</i> Math used to feel this niche, but programming makes it more visceral - when you&#x27;ve learned a programming language well enough, have access to a powerful computer, have a known to be solvable problem in your face - but just not succeeding to get at a working solutions and realizing it&#x27;s only of how bad the shitty chunk of jelly in your head is at thinking, that&#x27;s enlightening. Making you lose some of that self-confidence engendered by your otherwise rich education and artistic taste and developed culture and whatever not... realizing that no, neither that nor anything else will make you less dumb.)<p>Learning about computation helps up think better and helps us better model other people in our heads.<p><i>This is why I think computer science + practical programming should be mandatory for majoring in literature, linguistics, psychology or philosophy!</i><p>&lt;&#x2F;unpopular_and_mildly_hated_opinion&gt;

Because more professions are increasing coding proficiency requirements.<p>- artists - you should be able to automate blender, photoshop, etc as needed<p>- finance - python increasingly required<p>- science - juptyerhub notebooks for data analysis<p>You don&#x27;t have to know computer science, algos, and &quot;correct&quot; software arch. but you should definitely start getting comfortable with programming.

* You often need to teach the basics to lots of people for the smaller number that will take it up as a career to be exposed to it.<p>* Lots of work is done on computers and programming is a way of automating that work<p>* If you don&#x27;t code, you may well work with others that do and having some exposure to what on earth it is some people are&#x2F;aren&#x27;t doing is valuable. One of the most useful things I ever did was fail to run a business as it forced me to understand that sales&#x2F;etc aren&#x27;t <i>easy</i>, as many techies like to presume, and require skills I lack<p>* You can build things. Building things is fun, at least to me

Knowing how to write code in any specific language is ultimately a fairly useless skill except in a handful of jobs. Unless you&#x27;re someone who is either a developer or a spreadsheet user the chances are pretty high you&#x27;ll sail through life without even seeing a line of code.<p>However... the parts of programming that are useful to everyone are applied logic, critical thinking, and &#x27;debugging&#x27;. Being able to break down a problem, find a metaphor for a problem, evaluate what you know and don&#x27;t know about a problem, etc are useful skills that apply everywhere, and that programming teaches really well. When something isn&#x27;t working, being able to ascertain why by changing things one at a time, or by knowing that you can iterate to a solution instead of jumping to the last step, are immensely powerful ways of thinking about things.<p>There may be other ways to teach those skills instead of abstracting them to programming but I&#x27;ve not encountered any good ones yet.

For young people at an economic disadvantage it can completely change the course of your life to work at a high tech salary for a decade. It can free you up to do the work&#x2F;art&#x2F;anything that you&#x27;re more interested in.<p>But yeah I don&#x27;t know if &quot;should&quot; is real here. If you&#x27;re greatly compelled to do something else, go do that.

There is this story, perhaps apocryphal, that someone asked Louis Armstrong: what is so great about jazz?<p>Supposedly, he answered: &quot;If you have to ask, you&#x27;ll never know.&quot;<p>Programming is not exactly like that, but every programmer I know of has spent hours and hours programming for fun, because there is a particular pleasure to it akin to writing, where you sit for hours and create&#x2F;debug (puzzle solve).<p>Perhaps not everyone feels that way, but I think anyone can feel that way. It is worth giving a teenager a shot at that feeling.<p>It just so happens that this feeling is a gateway to making lots of change in the world, making money, participating in society and many other good things! This just happens to be such a great added benefit to this feeling that it should give you confidence that this would be a &quot;good habit&quot; for young people.

The same reason we learn any other subject -- to demystify it, and give people a basic understanding of it, so that others are less able to take advantage of your lack-of-knowledge to control you.<p>Yes, being exposed to a variety of fields in order to choose one and get a job is an important part of school. But I think giving kids a sense of how the important aspects of our lives &#x2F; society work under the hood is where the true value of education lies.<p>For the same reason, I think film&#x2F;media studies should be standard high school curriculum.

With much of the world we interact with being digital, or at least digitally connected, the ability to interact with that world is like unlocking a magical power.<p>Invoke regex to search through or fix thousands of pages of documents. Instantiate a daemon to help you around the house. Cast a bot army to do your bidding. Prove an idea true or false by creating a simulation of it. Create the app that no one would ever make because only you in particular need it.

The most compelling reason I communicate with young people who I work with in this age bracket is the idea of a safe sandbox.<p>Programming is a way to learn a new language that allows you to build something...ANYTHING...that you can easily tear down, upgrade, keep, or share.<p>There is nothing like the feeling of trying to build something, getting stuck, having the AHA moment, then seeing it work!<p>I don&#x27;t focus on a particular language, stack, or goal. I push them to think about what they want to build, break, and poke around with, find an example online, then open it up and try to modify it.<p>I&#x27;ve found that most teens want the ability the explore, on their own terms. Programming is too often told from the perspective of working adults who focus on productivity, profit, or protection against obsolescence (you better learn it b&#x2F;c it will be needed in your future). At that age, most kids aren&#x27;t motivated by that because it&#x27;s not their context.<p>I completely disagree with the notion that one has to &quot;just like it&quot; or &quot;find your own motivation or its not for you&quot;. This is not a pipeline problem. This is an incentive problem and the industry is mostly incentivized by efficiency, speed, and profit. I try to focus on the value.

1) Software is eating the world, so a basic understanding of computers&#x2F;programming&#x2F;... is imperative to understanding the world they will inhabit. I think this is similar to the logic behind everyone taking English, history, etc. classes.<p>2) It promotes logical thinking and problem solving skills. This is much the same reasoning why everyone must take math&#x2F;science classes. So, if we took some of the less &quot;relatable&quot; classes (e.g. geometry) in the mandated general curriculum, and replaced them with basic programming&#x2F;data-science classes, that might be an improvement. Especially since it is probably easier to many students interested in creating a Minecraft mod that pulls in statistics related to the real world, than it is to get many students excited about acute vs obtuse angles.<p>P.S. I say this as someone who LOVED math classes in general and geometry specifically. I really did get excited about writing Q.E.D. at the end of a tough proof. But, I know I am seriously in the minority there.

Given they are not interested in a tech career, I&#x27;d say they should learn to program if they:<p>- want to do something with computers no currently existing program allows them to,<p>- want to create something with artistic value (games, websites, computer graphics),<p>- enjoy it for the sake of it.<p>I can&#x27;t come up with any other reason why they should.

The layman should learn to program the same way that they should know how to cook. They won&#x27;t be as good as someone who is fascinated with CS, but they should know enough that they won&#x27;t &quot;starve&quot;. To me, everyone should know how to script a basic program (maybe snake or tetris is the line for basic), scrape for some information, and do basic data analysis. As tooling gets better all the time, I could see the goalposts moving a bit to standing up a server or making a basic AI. Just like not knowing how to use Google in the 2000&#x27;s would handicap you, I see programming knowledge the same way. You can survive without it, but the quality of life you&#x27;d enjoy would be much higher for knowing it.

Knowing the basics of programming can be a great tool in a lot of professions.<p>I watch my wife perform a lot of tasks with spreadsheets to accomplish things her coworkers can&#x27;t do (or would require a lot of manual work). Being able to import CSVs, do calculations, mail merges and other simple data processing may allow you to skip a lot of tedious manual work.<p>Programming is the next step. She would benefit from being able to write scripts to query different systems and then process more data than is practical in a spreadsheet, or do more complicated processing than a spreadsheet allows.<p>It&#x27;s not something everyone needs (just like spreadsheets, or even calculators), but it can let you get a lot more done in many non-tech professions.

Honestly, they shouldn&#x27;t if they aren&#x27;t interested.<p>But moving past that, Excel. Just a little bit of programming knowledge can really up your spreadsheet game.

Because &quot;programming plus $domain&quot; is going to be <i>the</i> skillset to have for their working lifetimes. The other domain can be just about anything. Any kind of engineering, obviously, plus any kind of science, business, medicine, even law. (In fact, between mining legal opinions from the past and building algorithmic contracts in the future I think law is an especially good one.) Even in more trades-oriented work, a little bit of programming to plan and lay things out can be a competitive advantage. Unlike programming in tech itself, which tends to put us all on an update treadmill, programming in other domains is something you tend to do once and benefit from forever.

Programming a computer is a way of thinking. It in some ways involves the same thinking as determining how to break down a mechanical manufacturing process, or parts of team management (sport or industry), or legal arguments, or considering how biology works.<p>Basic logic is part of this, as is process decomposition, as is just learning a new way of communicating and many other things.<p>Learning new ways of thinking makes us flexible individuals. It fosters creativity. These are skills we all need in society, but the modern economy especially.<p>This is actually, I think, a compelling argument (aimed at adults who are deciding what children will do, less so the children themselves) for almost any subject.

For the same reason we teach them more advanced mathematical theorems or other scientific knowledge:<p>- Because it&#x27;s good for their personal culture to know that this field exists and have a rough idea of how it works, and programming is the type of job that everyone knows it exists but not many people really know what it really is.<p>- Because it&#x27;s the type of knowledge you don&#x27;t get to build on your own unless your parents work in that field so many kids might actually enjoy it but would never know it until they try it. I see many comments saying &quot;if they&#x27;re not interested then they shouldn&#x27;t do it&quot;, but how can they know they&#x27;re not interested if they&#x27;ve never tried it ? They can&#x27;t, they&#x27;d base their assumptions on stereotypes, which learning programming would help breaking and maybe encourage more people, especially girls, to give it a go if they like it instead of thinking it&#x27;s just dark magic for nerds.<p>- Because in the age of everything-computers and everywhere-internet, understanding basic code and basic algorithms helps demystify the myth of &quot;it&#x27;s all the Algorithm, that magic black box that nobody can control&quot; that companies love to use to not have to explain to their customers what they do with their data. I&#x27;d argue knowing the basics of how a computer works in 2022 is as important as learning how to pay taxes or how to cook (which we also do not learn in school), because it&#x27;s everywhere in your life and you WILL interact with it no matter what.

Programming is often reduced to the technical part of putting down code that runs a machine. But as writing is not drawing symbols and reading is not vocal reproduction of these symbols, there is more behind programming than making a machine do what you want. Everything that is teached in school is in the end reduced to being able to solve problems.<p>Learn how to program is in fact learning how to formalize a large problem, think about it in a structured way, and if the problem is too large as a whole, divide it into manageable parts, that solve parts and together solve the problem as a whole. Additionally an individual that has learned how to program also learned about importance of precision of instructions.<p>Being able to do this, and being able to think about systems and processes in a structured way is helpful in a lot of disciplines beside tech industry.<p>Therefore it also doesn&#x27;t matter how children or young adults learn to code, this is more a question about how to get someones motivation and focus.<p>And especially this is not about getting a job in tech industry. Learning this type of problem solving (which is not exclusive to programming) and thinking about systems etc. will help you with&#x2F;in most of the jobs out there, e.g. kitchen chef, event&#x2F;wedding planner, car mechanic, musician,... you name it - even if you don&#x27;t write a line of code anymore in your life.

When I was a kid, we were flying somewhere for a family trip. I remember seeing a man with a laptop with a screen full of code. I had never seen this in person before, and I watched with genuine interest. Much later in life, I found out that I loved coding. I love problem-solving and find programming to be very engaging.<p>I don&#x27;t think we need to force every kid to learn to code. We ought to expose them to it, though. Kids who show interest ought to have a way to learn more.

I see lots of answer about the teenager&#x27;s interests. I really dislike answers like that. No one says that to people about other highly technical fields like electrician.<p>The answer is if you have an appropriate IQ and big 5 personality traits (high conscientiousness, low anxiety, etc) it can be a lucrative career.<p>Tightly coupling programming to video games is going to scoop up too many kids who will be fucking miserable as a programmer.

It feels like a leading question. Using the &quot;should&quot; in that question removes the agency to make that choice from the subject in that question. Arguably, the same question could be asked regarding learning how to play a musical instrument, right? Young people can express their own interests, and it&#x27;s important to take that into account as well.<p>So, let&#x27;s rephrase that question. &quot;What&#x27;s a reason that might compel young people the most to learn how to program?&quot;<p>Subtle difference, but makes for a far more interesting debate.<p>For instance, there will be kids who become inspired by video games and will be wanting to make their own. Some will start to scour the Web for resources and experiment with tools like, maybe, Unity or Godot, on their own. Others might be interested, but be entirely put off by the idea once they realize what the subject matter entails. And that&#x27;s, actually, totally fine and valid.<p>Even so, I think general curriculum should at least provide a few lessons of basic computing to anyone. Enough to get everyone the basic idea and demystify what happens behind the curtains in broad strokes.

Forget the &quot;tech industry&quot;. Even if they&#x27;re just &quot;browsing the web&quot; and using &quot;apps&quot;, they are constantly being shunted &amp; nudged around by code that someone else wrote. A little proficiency in being able to tweak and control that environment they are immersed in will go a long way towards enhancing their human agency.<p>As computers+algorithms become increasingly ubiquitous and powerful, being able to understand and use them effectively is as important as reading and writing -- not understand this is equivalent to being illiterate in an information society. Modern society&#x2F;civilization considers literacy &amp; numeracy so damn important that it is (at least nominally) willing to sit <i>all</i> its youth in an educational environment for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10+ years in the hope that enough of the three Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic) rub off on them. IMHO, computing is right up there in importance -- only we as a society might take decades to come to terms with that and learn how to equip people well.

Having a basic understanding of how computer work and think will be vital to navigate society, as more and more parts of it are digitized. I&#x27;m not saying that everything becomes crystal clear after programming 101, or that IT systems can be understood after learning &quot;Hello World&quot; and IF-THEN-ELSE, but it will become more and more useful to navigate the modern world.

Whenever this comes up, I ask myself: What are the reasons kids learn math? Reading poems, doing chemistry, or any other topic for that matter.<p>Naturally, there will always be someone who likes a given topic and there will be someone absolutely loathing it.<p>So people came up with different education systems (for the sake of discussion I keep it at two):<p>1. Let kids choose themselves what they want to learn [0]<p>2. Conventional education, where everyone gets to see a broad spectrum of topics, whether they like it or not<p>Personally, besides domain specific arguments for the importance of topics, I think showing kids different topics and letting them work in as many different fields as possible is important. And I don&#x27;t just mean passive consumption of knowledge, but applying it.<p>There are definitely kids who know for certain what they&#x27;re gonna do when they grow up, but for most people life isn&#x27;t a straight line and age 13-18 is THE best time to try them out IMO.<p>As for domain specific arguments:<p>1. Applying logic is obviously going to benefit anyone, just like learning math. Surely, with a kid this argument won&#x27;t fly, but it&#x27;s directed towards HN so I&#x27;m pretty sure you guys know what I .<p>2. As many have pointed out and to point out the obvious once more: Computers are everywhere and everyone is using them. I honestly think people should know, at least on a surface level, how computers and networks actually function. This isn&#x27;t necessarily an argument for programming, but programming goes hand in hand with what I&#x27;d call &quot;tech literacy&quot;, so why not kill two birds with one stone.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Montessori_education" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Montessori_education</a>

It&#x27;s a life skill like reading and writing. There used to be a time when most people couldn&#x27;t write except for minority, many of whom did it professionally. Most people sit in front of a computer for work, and many do repetitive tasks that could be offloaded to simple scripts.<p>It&#x27;s hard to explain to someone who can&#x27;t code how it would make their lives better, as I assume it once would have been difficult to explain to a farmer the value of reading, but there are societal benefits to everybody knowing how to read. We can post public information like highway exits and store hours and &quot;beware of dog&quot; signs and know that the majority of people will be able to read them.

I can think of at least two reasons:<p>* Information technology is important enough that it&#x27;s worthwhile having at least a passing understanding of how it works internally.<p>* It&#x27;s important to learn how to be rigorous when organizing information and procedures. Learning to program can help with both.

Programming teaches people to design solutions, and solve problems, in a structured and creative way. Concretely speaking, it gives the tools to solve some tasks very efficiently, but this needs experience.<p>However, forcing people (if that&#x27;s the context; it&#x27;s not clear), especially young ones, to learn something they don&#x27;t have any interest in, is a surefire way to make them hate the topic in first place, and forget it after.<p>There are other means though, that could be tailored to one&#x27;s interests, e.g. other engineering areas, or other science branches, or games (chess comes to my mind).<p>(of course, there&#x27;s a small part of people who will find out they&#x27;re actually interested, but that is the exception)

Why they should be programming if they aren&#x27;t interested in it?<p>Maybe they end loving History, or Linguistics, os Maths or Philosophy or whatever they like.<p>When I was 9 I wanted to be a cartoonist, but my dad, who was computer illiterate, bought a ZX Spectrum because he saw a sale, and I fell in love with games and programming at 10 by myself. If someone had tried to force programming on me I think I&#x27;d ended being a cartoonist (well, if I were talented enough).<p>I think we need to teach how to use computers as tools for an end, like the majority of us use a water tap whiout knowing plumbing. And the rest will come by itself, if it has to come.

&gt; if they are not interested in pursuing a career in the tech industry?<p>There is very little reason to learn something you aren&#x27;t going to use. They should invest their time in what they find compelling and they will be successful.<p>If you think they need to learn to code to be &quot;future proof&quot; that day has past. In the future there will be millions of coders it won&#x27;t pay well and they will have spent their energy, money and time doing something they don&#x27;t enjoy and have no use for.<p>You can make good money as a builder or electrician etc don&#x27;t try to fit a role you aren&#x27;t made for.

If they want to work with their hands, there aren&#x27;t many good reasons.<p>If they want to work with words or numbers, some basic programming will let them automate repetitive tasks and eliminate lots of boring work. Examples include simple calculations in spreadsheets, formatting writing for publication, filing work email, and automating invoices. It&#x27;s a useful skill like being able to touch-type.<p>In any case, they should not be forced to program for its own sake, since that has a narrow appeal. Instead, they should program only to do things they actually care about.

Fear of missing out in early days when it’s still possible. Some people can learn in their 30s, but most get stuck to some degree in what they know. What brings money becomes more and more algorithmic and automation dependent, because human-as-a-machine is expensive, and all low-hanging fruit margins were harvested a long time ago.<p>As someone said, in the future only three professions will be left: a stripper, a programmer and a taxi driver. Little did they know the latter is about to be gone.

My compelling reason is to discover if they&#x27;re naturally &quot;bent&quot; toward programming. Neither you nor the child will know until they give it a try for long enough to make something meaningful. Then, if they find it exciting&#x2F;interesting&#x2F;motivating...it&#x27;s time for more.<p>When I was 13, I found the process of web development incredibly fascinating AND had a teacher (who happened to be 14) who helped me get over the initial cognitive speed bumps. Those ~50 hours changed the course of my life.

If they mainly use computers for web browsing, why not show them how can programing make it more convenient? Teach them how to use, then modify and later create userscripts to simplify annoying stuff. Same with Discord bots. Show them how to scrape all videos of their favourite tiktoker. Help them create webpages to troll their friends. Some might find interesting Game of Life. If they are into art, teach them Processing. If they are into video games, they might be interesting in creating mods.

I think you can frame it as a useful skill to have that could help them in life. Try to approach it by relating it to their interests.<p>If they want to make music, explain how programming can be used to generate electronic music.<p>If they want to make and edit videos, tell them how EMCA script can automate things in Adobe, or point them to wrappers around ffmpeg<p>If they want to make art, point them to the various libraries that can be used to draw.<p>I find kids in that age range like to either tinker with hardware or like to make video games.

Computational thinking has applications beyond coding, it helps you learn to make logical decisions, and to break down problems into component parts, solving those parts in sequence. It also helps you think about how you yourself make decisions and take actions.<p>That said, a child can learn these things using Scratch or Logo, and it is better to learn these things at a much younger age than 13! For teenagers I would look at algorithmically-generated 3D models (for printing) and robotics.

I&#x27;m going to take point hits, but what about the opposite: why to AVOID it. For one, it&#x27;s a dead-end job. On average you&#x27;ll need to move into management or quasi-management to survive in IT. Even if you find a way to keep up with ever-changing programming fads, your fingers may likely give out. It may pay relatively well out of college, but your salary will mostly plateau. As leaked IBM emails show, IT hates old people. I&#x27;m just the jaded messenger.

It&#x27;s probably useful to be exposed to a variety of fields when you&#x27;re at school - that&#x27;s why we study so many subjects that we won&#x27;t use directly in our careers. Programming is like that too.<p>It&#x27;s like asking why kids should study chemistry or literature - they don&#x27;t <i>have to</i> but it&#x27;s probably a good idea. I don&#x27;t think programming is more special in any way (even though personally I might like it more than those other fields).

Um, because programming machines to do repetitive tasks has been an undeniable component in vector of progress for science, business and art for the last 200 years.

Even if a person is not interested in the tech industry, it&#x27;s still a highly valuable skill.<p>I know someone who has a lot of tedious work to do. If they could program they&#x27;d be able to do it much more efficiently. They can use that time saved to do anything else they want to do, perhaps they could have earned a promotion rather than slaving away on a repetitive task.<p>The world moves forward through efficiency, and automation is one of the major factors in that.

1) To gain an appreciation or the gist of programming. I mean, most careers these days involve technology, software. Many non developers have to use &quot;low code&quot; software. 2) They might discover they DO like it and pursue a career in it. I think this is no different than other skills or disciplines. Give something an honest try first.

It instills a “just try it, try it again” kind of attitude. It’s not the only path to that mindset, but it is an easy one.

Because it improves your problem solving capabilities. Along with programming you learn the idea of debugging, and so many non-tech problems in life are made easier when you &quot;debug&quot; your life. It teaches kids to look at problems as something to be solved and not a reason to get discouraged and quit an activity.

If they are not interested in tech they might not need to learn it. Basic literacy might be helpful in some situations, especially since users aren&#x27;t really masters of their own devices anymore and the technicalities are well hidden from them.<p>To see if the tech is interesting it might not hurt to have an introductory course though.

Computers are everywhere, that trend is only increasing. True power now and in the future is learning the languages that tell those computers to do what you want.<p>That ability gives you power, money, respect, but most importantly it lets you influence the world around you.<p>If you want any or all of those things study computers.

I think we should let kids do what comes naturally. If they like the idea of coding, support and encourage it. On the other hand, if they like playing softball, encourage that.<p>Not everybody needs to know how to build technology. It&#x27;s probably good enough to make sure they at least know how to use it.

Perhaps if people were more literate in programming, they could demand more from software vendors. Think spotting BS&#x2F;over-promising by vendors.<p>I think too many managers&#x2F;execs sign off on software that&#x27;s of such low quality because everything is magic to them and they don&#x27;t know to dream bigger.

Why should a young person learn woodworking or metalworking? Because, even if they never do anything with it professionally, it still comes in handy when they just want to do something. Being able to envision something and then make it real is <i>really cool</i>.

There&#x27;s not going to be less computers in the future. Learning to program is like learning to read.

It changes how you think about general problems. Consider algebra: you learn a particular way of abstracting quantities and manipulating those abstractions. Programming does the same for processes. It also teaches you about problem modeling and decomposition.

Learning computer programming is like having superpowers. You gain the ability to perform billions of calculations per second. You can scrape content from everywhere, build your own stuff, games, visuals.... Anything. To me this is incredible.

Modding Minecraft and other games.

Learning to break a complex task into simpler steps and reasoning about the input and output of those steps is a necessary skill in any leadership and management position. Programming teaches people to think in this mode

Simple. Not to fall for marketing slogans and false promises, and not to rely too much on the results of technology. If you know (at least basically) how the sausage is made, you will know it does not work without meat.

Money. You&#x27;ll make more money even in non-tech jobs if you can write scripts to automate stuff, or understand technical concepts to be able to articulate business needs to the tech team.

Because it’s fun? And if it’s not fun, they should do something else.

Computers and software are involved in pretty much every aspect of modern life. Having a basic understanding of them allows you to understand and predict their behaviors.

Because they&#x27;re interested in it.<p>There aren&#x27;t any other reasons to learn it.<p>At all.

It’s the simplist way to make more than minimum wage.

If &quot;magic&quot; means changing reality with your mind, then programming is the closest thing to magic (that we know of).

Because it&#x27;s a fun and interesting thing to do.<p>If they don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s fun, maybe they should do something else.

Being able to keep things working would be good.<p>At the very least it can give you some added analytical abilities. Like learning Excel.

Because you can automate the boring stuff. Apply logic once and relax. A human shouldn’t have to act like a computer.

So that they can see through the BS explanation of “glitch” and call out the news for never digging deeper.

USA is moving toward an intellectual property economy. Lots of IP, especially informatics requires code.

And I&#x27;ll go the other way - children should not be taught towards programming. After 20 years in front of a computer, I find that working in front of a computer is one of the worst jobs in the 21st century.

So that they can make money for when they become sick from sitting behind a computer all day.

Because it&#x27;s fun. Lots other good reasons, but to me this is the most important.

You can have an idea, and bring it into reality. There&#x27;s nothing else like it.

The only compelling reason is to increase your brain plasticity. They could learn a foreign language instead though, or an instrument, or both; then at least they might get laid.

Automating things is cool

Define programming!

Money<p>But engineers have more fun

Be in control of your destiny.

hacking

It’s like learning a second language.<p>You learn programming language to talk to computer