Thanks for sharing this, it's easy to get stuck in our Silicon Valley bubble. Thought it was really interesting how CodeAcademy was framed for mass media.
i think he was a bit off base in calling everyone from all walks of life to learn to code.
coding is truly useful for already somewhat technical, detail-oriented people who can get more work done or get it done faster with code. it is certainly not for everyone to know how to do in practice, but an in-depth "Intro to How Computers/Internet Works" is a must for everyone.
The internet is NOT a series of tubes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
And isn't a good amount of the internet infrastructure guarded by conduit? Literally making it a series of tubes...
With Ted Stephens, it's probably more accurate to say that it was one more reason to dislike someone who a lot of people already had a lot of reasons to dislike.
"Ah, yes. The same way writing was for exceptionally dull monks. And yet, strangely, the world became a better place as more people learnt reading and writing.
I might be dull - I let my friends judge - but I'd like to make one point very clearly. Pretty much the entire world runs based on some code written somewhere. Anything of consequence is more and more computer-controlled. If you'd really want to have your kids ignorant, helplessly observing a small priest caste "perform magic", without any chance of changing the world, please, by all means, do leave programming to us weirdos." I read this here: https://plus.google.com/+RachelBlum/posts/WWiJtjeCoxj
i read a lot about discoveries in theoretical physics and even though i couldnt discern a gluon from a top quark in a Feynman diagram, i have very rough concept of what's involved without doing any math or solving formulas. the same applies to every technical subject on the planet. programming/IT is an extremely deep field that has no bottom, much like genetics, biology, etc.
more doctors and research Ph.Ds have a larger potential to change the world than additional programmers; putting coding on some pedestal is quite inappropriate. to me, biochemists perform the same "magic" as you speak of.
if you don't pursue coding out of deep interest for the art, you wont change the world either. you may write a basic web page or blog for yourself and hack together some VBA excel macros, but that's about it. i don't think anyone comes out of Codecademy ready to write the next Crysis game or a Google, FB or Amazon infrastructure.
And I don't think that learning to code is equivalent to working professionally as a programmer. The same way as learning how to read and write is different than being a writer or a poet, and yet no one argue about the importance of being literate.
And yes, even if you only know how to use VBA to summarize your research results, it'd still probably worth it.
If nothing else, advocating for that is in his company's best interest.