&gt;If you do not think thinking coding is basic skill like literacy and arithmetic, then what do you think you will be doing in ten years to stay as productive as the machines taking so many jobs?<p>The human mind will probably have little to no value in the economy of the future. Machines will inevitably write the books, make the movies, make the music and publish the science. Of course, there will probably still be a market for human generated content, but only because of human vanity. Humans will still play Go despite it having been mastered by machines already, and will still consider themselves &quot;good&quot; at it.<p>&gt;Will anyone with dream&#x27;s of being a novelist be able to compete with the computers in twenty years.<p>Most people can&#x27;t even write well enough to compete with other humans, so very little harm done there.<p>&gt;Write code or prepare to compete with software.<p>It doesn&#x27;t matter. You can&#x27;t compete with software, you have already lost. Human software literacy is nothing but a necessary stopgap until all coding is automated as well. Human computer literacy is doomed to become a fringe and arcane art, like calligraphy. How many jobs with good penmanship get you in the modern world?<p>This is why coding isn&#x27;t a basic life skill. Most people never encounter code in their day to day lives. Their computers run applications someone else has already written. They only need to know how to push buttons. Coding is nothing more than the application of existing basic skills like reading, writing and logic to a niche (and soon to be obsolete) occupation.