At my HS (in the 80s), they had computer programming - PASCAL, FOTRAN, COBOL and other languages - which only (white) boys took. This was an elective course then and essentially a (white) boys computer club in high school.
And, since we're on the top, look up the stats and ratios on AP computer science and computer science degrees at places like Georgia Tech, Stanford, MIT and you'll see that there's still a diversity issue with it.
Today, there's MIT's Scratch and Code Academy and other ways to learn how to code. Some are more open or I'd say welcoming to a diverse population. Others, I don't feel are so.
I took HTML and had to design a web page in library grad school. Was it useful? Yes and no. It was an elective and not a required course of the curriculum because the core curriculum still rests with the ways information is cataloged, searched, analyzed, processed, stored, etc. I found computer programming sooooo linear, sequential, dry, and pedantic to be far, far worse than I ever imagined. Yuck.
Should computer programming be required before high school? No, I don't think so, imo. It's useful information and helpful to some students. BUT I do think that digital literacy and the way information is processed, cataloged, and stored has precedence for public education. Public education can, of course, make computer programing available or briefly touched upon the topic.
