Why, exactly, teach coding?

So here we are, in another generation of Let’s teach programming to kids.

We’ve got Scratch, Tynker, Hopscotch, ThimbleMinecraftEdu, Codea, and many, many others — great ways for kids to get their feet wet with programming and building digital things.

Pick up the Education section of any newspaper or magazine these days and you’ll see a profile of someone who’s either teaching kids to code, or building a foundation or a policy to support someone who is. It’s a wave.

But this isn’t the first one. And this time, just as before, it’s worth asking why, exactly, teaching kids to code is so important.

If you’re part of this enterprise, what makes you so sure this is worth it? And how do you convince others they should join in?

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