Furthermore, the people who do use "advanced math", for example engineers, physical scientists, and financial quants, also need to know how to program. So I don't see why far more people should be expected to learn advanced math than to program, except that advanced math is well-entrenched as a filtering mechanism for entering high-paid professions.
I am a professional scientist who uses advanced math (in the corporate world, not in academia). I also know how to program, but I don't *need* to know how to program in my profession - there are people who are professional scientific programmers who do the actual programming that I use in my work. Most of the scientists I work with would rather not touch programming with a 10-foot poll - they see it as very boring and also very frustrating compared to scientific analysis
Re teaching actual programming (rather than the scientific method or programming-think concepts) in elementary and middle school, I'm not sure it's terribly important compared to other basics that need to be taught. Programming platforms/languages/etc change very rapidly - I think my kids will be a-ok learning to program after they've decided what they want to do for a career, and choosing something that is relevant to their career or fun for them as a hobby, rather than worrying about learning programming before they go to university. (Unless of course my ds wants to program an app that will make his mother fabulously wealthy
).
polarbear
