This entire piece rests on a speculative notion that teaching is a zero-sum game, as if students can only learn to code at the expense of learning math and science skills. That seems specious at best. Or, in the author's words, "give me a break."

There seems to be an emerging consensus that the inequality of the future will be largely defined by those who are technologically literate and those who aren't. Coding is likely a part of that literacy. But of course it's easy to be disdainful of something that doesn't affect you (or that you don't understand very well).

Everyone ought to read Klaus Schwab's book to get an idea of what the technological future is shaping up to look like and just how close we are to some watershed developments: https://www.weforum.org/about/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-by-klaus-schwab

In his words, the technological changes of our times are a fourth industrial revolution. Far from some silly fad.