And the idea that you can't grasp that I already stated that an intro course is appropriate and that isn't what we are talking about tells me you you need to start reading and understanding posts before you reply to them.

"Show me the down side of making it mandatory? There isn't one."

Every moment spent learning something a person can't use is time spent not learning something that will provide them a return on their investment. Furthermore the teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator so if you drop that number the quality of the classes drops dramatically. The fact that you thought "there is none" should be an indicator to you that you aren't smart enough to interject your thoughts into this discussion, but too late so allow me to continue.

"Programming is essential to life at this point, to truly take advantage of what we have available, and forcing kids to take a semester of it so they have a very rudimentary understanding rather than considering it akin to magic, is vital."

OK, fist of all programming isn't even close to "essential to life" at this point. Look around you dipshit. Go to the gas station. See all the people programming? OK, now the mall. Do you see anyone programming? Go to a restaurant. How about now? What a stupid fucking thing to say.

As far as the math vs. programming thing math is something all people I who deal with money in any way need and use. Basic math. Not algebra, geometery, and calculus, which are ... wait for it ... electives.

Oh come on. I learned what a moron you are; that's something.

I will have to take your word for it as I certainly am not about to hunt for examples in a codebase that I am never going to use.

You don't yet know how to capitalize properly so it really isn't something you need to worry about. You need to become competent in basic communication skills before endeavouring to understand what software development even means.

I literally have no idea what you are trying to say.

What the *fuck* are you going on about. At no time did I suggest that Python wasn't a valid language, nor did I suggest that astrophysicists can't develop quality software. You will never find an anti-Python post from me. Can you even read?

" IDE's like to shit bogus files and bogus code all over the place."

You fucking moron. You really thought you could just claim you never wrote it and it would magically disappear?

Yeah. I already said that. We are also protected from military censorship if we are civilians. The military can only censor members of the military.

I said Software Development, not playing around and writing a 'hello world' program. I also said that it makes sense to expose everyone to that level of programming in order to see if they have the skills and aptitude to develop software. You seem to be so dead set on proving me wrong you can't figure out that you have restated my original post in different words dipshit.

I never said anything about code generation. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Not all IDEs generate code and create files, though a good one can generate tags and provide autocomplete suggestions for programming idioms. If you don't like the term IDE to refer to a properly configured emacs or vim setup with cscope, gcc, and gdb (or similar) then substitute 'editor with syntax highlighting' in your head if you prefer, since the OP idiot was stating that matching up the beginning and ending of code blocks shouldn't require an editor that can do that. That was the point. If your development environment doesn't do syntax highlighting you are not qualified to develop software. Period.

". I have noticed many developers are pretentious, and think that they have some special skill. Hate to break it to you: we don't"

You definitely don't. The fact that you want to cling to this idea that anyone can do it speaks directly to the fact that you know that really you aren't qualified and you don't want to admit that. Anyone who is qualified has worked with enough people who never will be no matter how hard they try to know the difference. To really drive the point home there are many people who can't get enough of a grasp on math skills to function as a cashier without having a register to tell them what the change should be. Your assertion that these same people are qualified to write software is beyond ridiculous.

No. It isn't a semantic game because the government referred to in the first amendment is the US government. The first amendment does not protect your right to free speech in other countries. I get that you are saying that the government of another country is essentially extorting DC by saying that they won't be able to do business in China, but the censorship is still voluntary. It comes down to a question of if a company will be willing to sell out for money to appease a foreign government, and clearly DC Comics is willing to do that here.

First of all if you are writing code without an IDE in 2019 you definitely shouldn't be writing code at all. You can compile Python to machine code and you can interpret C. The fact that you don't understand this is further evidence that you are not a professional software developer, or at least not a competent one.

I usually read entire books that don't have curly braces strewn throughout. Most code is indented and the last thing I would want to do is read it if it wasn't, curly braces or not. What's your point?