You&#x27;re 10 steps ahead of us all and probably living more than 10 years into the future. Yes, programming is a form of literacy. But in <i>todays</i> world, programming is also a job. Just like being a scribe was a job in ancient times, HTML&#x27;er was a job 10 years ago (and still is in some places) and programmer is one today (but <i>assembly</i> programmer is a job that is now in large part taken over by compilers).<p>And that skill has a lot of value to people that don&#x27;t have that skill or are limited by their own time so we get paid for it. Probably a decent number of years will have to pass before we can call programming &#x27;just a skill&#x27; akin to writing.<p>If you&#x27;re going to put ideas out that are borderline detached from the current reality it would be great if you gave your thoughts a bit more foundation so you&#x27;re easier to follow, it just so happens that I saw what you meant but I can also understand why someone who is currently a programmer by profession would in some subtle way feel offended if you called their profession (which is a hard one!) the equivalent of a telephone user or a pencil user.