Let me use another analogy (actually programming is the art of analogy). Chess.

You have a board. (defined totally)
You have pieces
        Their characteristics are defined. Where they start. how they move.
You have initial piece placement.
You have some special rules (pawn en passant, castling, pawn promotion, responding to check, not moving into check)
You have the end (king check mate)

A start, a path, and end. Just like programming. but there are many paths, to the point that the problem is so complex that there are people that are beginners and people that are Chess Masters. Is there a difference in a game between Chess Masters vs beginners. Only someone with a good level of understanding of the game maybe could tell. It is just pieces on a board moved around, must be craft right?

J2EE does allow a lot of latitude. One might argue too much. Initially .NET allowed simple solutions more easily. I remember a 45 minute intensive workshop at one Java One to implement a J2EE 'Hello World' app. Whats wrong with that picture?

We are given languages that give us functional verbs. We extend that set of verbs with our method writing towards a higher level, problem domain language to make it easier and more direct to say the solution to our problem in that higher level language. The frameworks are just specific languages that sometimes solve a different problem than you have on hand, but in some organizations you need to use that language for all applications. Like a maze of one way streets, sometimes your route to a solution with a framework can take you far afield.

Libraries are just bundles of sub-dialect that can pre-fill gaps in the language you are dealing with. But then I don't much care which language you are dealing with, it gets down to the Data Structures and Algorithms. I did Java for about 10 years and moved over to a Microsoft shop and do C# and VB.Net. Just different accents of the same language actually, but the coding is essentially the same.

Its true much of programming especially in big shops is craft. Small shops, startups can be different, or even in large shops, the right brain leap into novel solutions is art. You make of it what you will. There are craftsmen and artists in the IT world. I have been lucky to get my share of art done. Art is an approach, like Martial Arts, you never hear of Martial Craftsmen, although that is much of who the ones learning the art are, like a draftsmen working for an architect. The aspiration it to climb up to be part of the Art. One aspires to understanding that allows more creative solutions rather than tab A into Slot A.

Ah, There is the difference, just as you might say that a novelist is a craftsman rather than an artist. There is a level of understanding and experience that transforms the craft to an art. If you only think of it as a craft then for you it is a craft and will always be a craft, but as the best engineering is invisible, the same is said for an artfully crafted program, with all the considerations and degrees of freedom handled, with the flow natural and maintainable. As there is an art to poetry which is just words and sentences pieced together , there is an art to programming as well. In the construction world there are carpenters, builders and architects. The architects are the artists at the top. The craft is below. It is much easier to do the art when you have wide ranging control. So not all environments allow the practice of that art. I hope at some time in the future you have that opportunity.

After working for 40 years in IT and 27 years teaching CS at Northwestern part time I would say that a lot of the young programmers don't have a real sense of programming. They feel that knowing a particular framework is programming, or using a particular package is programming. But the deep programming comes from the Data Structures and algorithms used and the patterns used. There is an art to programming much of which comes with time, experience and study. So you may not be fashionable if you don't have all the latest acronyms on your resume but if you don't know the DS and Alg. you are just window dressing.

The pigeon. Carrier Pigeons are extinct, maybe they can take the DNA and do a Jurasic Park on it and bring them back. Proably less scary than a Rapor. Or was that passenger pigeon? which is not with us any longer?

A Sky King moment for sure. Or was that Winky Dink?

Now Apple is going to put Chinese workers out of a job. I can see it in 20 years, the CEO and CTO the only ones raking in the money, in their automated office with roomba's (made in Poland) cleaning up the office after hours and their Google driverless cars taking them home, to their Toyota robot butler opening the door...

"something credible" sorry, the fellow is a clown and a bad actor. (every see him cry? or get angry?, not even a b-adult movie director would hire him. )

You must be hungry for dirt.

Well is looks like it was made up of a form of the work born actually.

"Glorious Harmony" sounds like the name of the cult that dressed them selves up in robes lay down and poisoned themselves because they new the Alien ship was coming to snatch them away to heaven.

But then it is true that there are racists, sexist, homophobes, .... What is being described with those terms is some aspect of the persons behaviour that is offensive to other humans. If you go down South in this country, you don't have to travel far to find someone who thinks Blacks should still be slaves, or at least are unworthy of consideration, support, or any positive attention. A holdover from the slave owner days that many have not gotten over or their defeat in the civil war. Its real, there are people that have some form of those feelings. Certainly on a sliding scale between it not making a difference and a lynching party. So maybe the scientific part of when to apply the term to someone needs a threashold point on that continuum. There are those that will apply it if they see any deviation from center, others apply it as a description of more blatant attitudes or behaviour. But it is a real description and there are really people who are racists, homophobes, sexits... and my feeling is that people should be called out when they get too far out of line. Often time they run with people who think the same so don't even have an idea that that behavior or thought is anything but natural and accepted. Sometimes that needs to be pointed out.

I find it also good to travel around the world and observe different cultures. Many of our assumptions about behavior and what is good and bad need to be reviewed.

Well in the case of the insult to Mohammad, it was far right because it was ridicule coming from a Coptic Christian (maker) and put out there by a right wing nut job.
In the case of the Greek Orthodox ridicule, it was coming from someone who was ridiculing the religion for being so far right (conservative, orthodox, intolerant, ideologically certain of having the truth and I'll put you in jail if you openly disagree). So the right wing , moderate, left wing has to do with the protester not the protest. As you can see that very different people can get together on the same issue but are very different in political location. A good example is the moderate to left position on legalization of pot for recreational purposes allied with the far , far right Libertarians who want the same thing but because they don't want government interference (local, state, or federal). (Your not a libertarian if you only don't want federal interference).

But then you would think you would know that.

But when governments make the lists, you know the ones that have power to put you in prison or deny you accesses to services or locations or permits or can tax you, to gets creepy. We have seen targeted political action before and we still have a collective nightmare over it. Lets stop that and have governements blind to things like race, creed, sexual orientation..

The point being that teachers are committed to their work (at least a good portion) but the idea that the school board will make up the difference isn't realistic without grass roots support and pressure. The trouble with your attitude of, teachers should stop buying supplies and go home at 5pm ignores the central first principle here of teaching the kids. That is tantamount to Rommey's statement the GM should just go bankrupt, jobs and lives and families and kids be damned.

As to the Federal govt involvement, absolutely!, just like insurance companies sharing risk across populations, sharing costs across population enables a more even education across all types of counties and local jurisdictions. I think we have a responsibility to have as even a educational playing field so our country can be a meritocracy not an aristocracy (which is where we are heading). We need to be a democracy not an oligarchy Leaving it to local counties and you better not be born in Appalachia, or rural Mississippi.