> there is a link between them in the sense that for almost any activity that you could call programming you need to be able to read and write.

I couldn't agree more. With that in mind, his last paragraph really bothered me:

"Thirty years from now, will the United States be more competitive with a population that can read English at a tenth-grade level or with a population excellent at making the complex machines of that era do their bidding? The two options may be mutually exclusive..."

All the best programmers I know are also excellent writers. I don't know if I'd reach for causation there, but the correlation is impressive.