You are speaking only for value of something, when I was talking about weighing value when burdened by constraints. I gave a list of valuable interests, but I noted the problem of opportunity cost.<p>So the question is not &quot;should we have dance&quot; in schools, but, &quot;What do we cut? What do we downsize? How about exercise or history?&quot;. Alternative, &quot;instead of programming, how about statistics and personal finance?&quot; <i>These</i> are far more interesting questions, because these questions acknowledge constraints and weighing. If we didn&#x27;t have to exercise constrained thinking, we mind as well say, &quot;let&#x27;s have it all&quot;.<p>Saying that programming is at the intersection of so many subjects is unrealistic, and the same could be said about math, physics, or statistics, and I&#x27;d say that statistics and personal finance are far better candidates if you had to somehow squeeze one more thing into school at the cost of something else.<p>The reason why software exists at some intersection with another discipline is almost always statistics. Statistics, then, is the most flexible gateway to numerous disciplines, and software is the tangential detail to statistics. The scientist exercises experimental modelling, collects the data, and inputs it into an excel sheet, and imports it into the university software suite. And this is the right level of involvement between a scientist and software. The scientist is rightly not interested in the details of software. Nor the physicist, or the student of history, literature, or the exercise enthusiast or the musician. These people are all very justified in throwing money at the problem for a prepared solution, because software is the detail.