Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex

Well coding and software engineering are two different things anyway, so the article begins with conflating the context. Coding is just syntax awareness, good at coding is one thing but to start engineering software(And hence where the ethics issue mostly lies, say with bias inheriting algorithms) requires that gap of discipline that you don't necessarily have if you just play in code in a rudimentary fashion.

False dichotomy. It is both fun and technically complex.

This article is not only wrong, it's the opposite of the truth. Putting to one side the blatant false dichotomizing, let's look at the central argument:

> Insisting on the glamour and fun of coding is the wrong way to acquaint kids with computer science.

I'm not convinced that:

A) This is happening very much,

B) or would work even if it was happening,

C) or would be particular bad if it happened and somehow also worked.

Messaging in the vein of the author's examples is innocuous. Nobody is going to see Tim Cook say "coding is fun" in a news clip and then conclude that a four year computer science degree is easy, or that their friend who works in software is an idiot and gets paid simply to have fun. With regards to more intentional examples, let's be realistic: how many kids are going to see a presentation in class entitled "coding is fun" and respond differently than "this blows, what's for lunch?"

And what if they did? They might learn something about it on wikipedia; they might try writing a script; they might choose a major they would otherwise have overlooked. Which is, frankly, the best thing we could hope for. The problems facing engineering in 2019 aren't the result of too many people being interested in computer science, they are the result of too few.

> In just a few years, understanding programming will be an indispensable part of active citizenship

This is clearly untrue, unless you interpret it more broadly as "having a general understanding of technology and the role it plays in the economy." And along with statistics and logic, it already is, and we have failed utterly to proselytize it. Do you think that our society would be improved by a push to make statistics more boring to students?

Flow is not the sense of time disappearing because the dubstep is loud and the code makes sense and the feature is getting built and the tests are passing. Flow is the sense of time slowing down for a musician and the blur of fast notes stretching out into a precise and engineered plan.