Do some Googling around the idea of &quot;procedural literacy&quot;.<p>Coding <i>is</i> like reading, maths, other sciences, in that while you don&#x27;t need to be very good at it, you really do need to know what computers are and are not capable of and how they solve problems. You need to be able to do this to do all sorts of things; be a judge in a courtroom and not fall to the CSI effect, to not worry about &quot;hackers stealing your credit card&quot; over SSL, etc. etc. It&#x27;s simply not OK in this day and age to look at a computer like a magic box.<p>Everyone should learn to code. Not everyone should be a coder.