Excellent article on TechCrunch by Jon Evans, “When Code is Hot”

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/07/when-code-is-hot/

Excerpt:

“That first cited piece above begins with “Parlez-vous Python?”, a cutesy bit that’s also a pet peeve. Non-coders tend to think of different programming languages as, well, different languages. I’ve long maintained that while programming itself — “computational thinking”, as the professor put it — is indeed very like a language, “programming languages” are mere dialects; some crude and terse, some expressive and eloquent, but all broadly used to convey the same concepts in much the same way.

 
Like other languages, though, or like music, it’s best learned by the young. I am skeptical of the notion that many people who start learning to code in their 30s or even 20s will ever really grok the fundamental abstract notions of software architecture and design.

 
Stross quotes Michael Littman of Rutgers: “Computational thinking should have been covered in middle school, and it isn’t, so we in the C.S. department must offer the equivalent of a remedial course.” Similarly, the Guardian recently ran an excellent series of articles on why all children should be taught how to code. (One interesting if depressing side note there: the older the students, the more likely it is that girls will be peer-pressured out of the technical arena.)”