&gt; <i>All the evidence shows that programming requires a high level of aptitude that only a small percentage of the population possess.</i><p>No such evidence, at least not in any respectful sources.<p>&gt; <i>will do nothing to help the skills shortage</i><p>Who said that <i>this</i> is the immediate goal of teaching as many people as possible to code?<p>&gt; <i>Given the skills shortage one would expect graduates from computer science courses to have very high employment rates.</i><p>This logic is broken on so many levels that it&#x27;s even embarrassing to comment. Let&#x27;s start with a trivial nitpicking that <i>Computer Science</i> education got nothing to do with the <i>Software Engineering</i>.<p>&gt; <i>there are two populations: one that finds programming a relatively painless and indeed enjoyable thing to learn and another that can’t learn no matter how good the teaching</i><p>It is really embarrassing that the guy who wrote it calls himself a programmer - i.e., someone who is supposed to be logical and rigorous.<p>There are far more categories that these two. And the most important category, targeted by all the programmes he&#x27;s mocking, is the people who do no even know if they&#x27;ll find programming enjoyable, because they never tried.