Why is that surprising? I am a professional programmer and frankly, it's a trade skill. Teaching kids at school how to program is like teaching them plumbing or how to be an electrician. To specialise that early is just crazy. Sure, teach general logical problem solving, but to specialise as far as what is a niche skill?

Sure, this is an unpopular viewpoint on Hacker News, where the audience is self-selecting to the viewpoint that programming is the most important life skill there is and that 90 percent of the population should learn to program, but that's just the typical nonsense any self-selecting audience ends up groupthinking. If this were a farming forum, people would be shouting "why aren't we teaching children how to grow turnips?".